Iraqi Leader Takes Bush's Calls

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By Robert Scheer, AlterNet. Posted May 24, 2006.
http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/36648/

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George W. Bush received a standing ovation Monday from the National Restaurant Association convention, which might have been expected had he promised to guarantee a right to exploit immigrant cooks and dishwashers through a guest-worker program. But that wasn't the president's topic, and the applause came after Mr. "Mission Accomplished" bragged about the latest "incremental" progress in Iraq .

"We have now reached a turning point in the struggle between freedom and terror," Bush said of the partial formation of a new Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. If you search for this quote on Google, though, be careful not to confuse it with the many other similar moments in Iraq's recent history. For example, two years ago Bush said that "the rise of a free and self-governing Iraq will deny terrorists a base of operation, discredit their narrow ideology, and give momentum to reformers across the region," after the U.S. officially turned over sovereignty.

With all these turns, it's no wonder Americans are a little "unsettled" about this quagmire, to use the commander in chief's own delicate description of the public's deep and bitter frustration with this war. Despite the public's nausea over the war, hope springs eternal for a White House panicked by the prospect of a Democratic-controlled Congress with the power to investigate its mendacity. And so Bush was back in form Monday, proclaiming that the latest head honcho in Iraq has got the right stuff and that the terrorists are quaking in their sandals.

Problem is, like everything about his Iraq policy since he lied to us about Saddam Hussein being connected with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the president refuses to allow reality into his picture. Because when a government is formed that has no power over a slew of murderous sectarian militias and will govern from behind the walls of a "Green Zone" protected by an occupying army, it still lacks the legitimacy of a wooden dinar . . . more: http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/36648/


my 2 cents -- Bush's Wicked Iraq Lies (5-22-2006)