No surprise here. Remember the "we create our own reality" quote? Perception is much more important for these liars than what is really happening. As long as no one uses the word insurgency, there is no insurgency. It's really astonishing what they get away with.

Posted by: Gus at September 29, 2006 05:16 PM | Permalink to this comment

Perception is much more important for these liars than what is really happening.

The problem is that at some level, they're right to think that perception is more important than reality. If I'm remembering correctly, one of the realists (not Scowcroft; perhaps an academic) said that after the loss in Iraq, we would still remain the dominant player in the region. We're a gigantic, successful country, and, if we're not impervious to all the whims of fortune, we're nearly so. For three-plus years, we've been willing to pay the blood-and-treasure costs in Iraq absent any real evidence of success; that's just a cost we're willing to bear. And it isn't a position-changing cost; we're still top-dog in the world, and well able to defend ourselves from outside threats. Mistakes don't matter; our lives will just suck a little more than they might have, and we might not even notice our diminishing expectations. So the only thing really worth fighting over is power in these United States.

Posted by: SomeCallMeTim at September 29, 2006 06:07 PM | Permalink to this comment

>These are incompetents at the helm, not serious war leaders.

And yet you're still a Republican.

I can't think of a better illustration of someone being a sucker. What exactly do they have to do to change you vote?

I don't think they can bankrupt the country any faster or destory our armed forces any more quickly. Is there no final straw with you people?

Posted by: Richard Bottoms at September 29, 2006 06:14 PM | Permalink to this comment

Dems would be worse!

No, really -- tax hikes would increase unemployment, and more spending / waste means the deficit doesn't really come down that much (unless the Reps control the House in hostility to a Dem president).

We're in a different kind of serious war -- one very dependent on perception, and the responses of the Islamists.

Yeah, Bush was being "silly" to avoid better counter-insurgency. But I don't recall you, Greg, nor especially any of the Dems to be focusing on real counter-insurgency plans, either.

In fact, wasn't there some kind of Dem letter to college students about how the Reps wanted a draft? (eg more troops) -- yet the Reps denied it.

Why didn't the Dems come out and say: we need more troops, we need a draft? -- because they wanted the Reps to say it. And lose the election.
And Bush decided no; don't say it; deny it. And win in Iraq without a draft. And win re-election in 2004.

And when we DO win in Iraq (in 10-15 more years), won't that prove that "more troops" were NOT desperately needed?

It's like coward Al Gore -- where's his call for higher gas taxes to reduce oil use? "It's too unpopular..."

Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at September 29, 2006 06:38 PM | Permalink to this comment

Good argument. We have to vote for the Khmer Rouge, because the Democrats would spend more. That's some good, clear, long-term and moral thinking.

Posted by: babylon at September 29, 2006 06:44 PM | Permalink to this comment

Tom Grey, I can't bring myself to your level of cynicism and despair.

But a minor reality point -- If democrats were to increase taxes nd increase spending by the same amount, the effect on the economy would be -- not much. The way you stimulate the economy is with deficit spending -- Bush spending. Driving up the national debt to get a short-term stimulus to the economy.

That aside, the Republicans are utterly worthless. And you think the Democrats are even worse. Why not campaign for LIbertarians? Why choose the marginally-less-bad party of giant government, when that one is bad enough to bankrupt us?

Posted by: J Thomas at September 29, 2006 07:48 PM | Permalink to this comment

Dems would be worse!

No, really -- tax hikes would increase unemployment, and more spending / waste means the deficit doesn't really come down that much (unless the Reps control the House in hostility to a Dem president).

Where were you in the 1990s when tax hikes were followed by
a capital spending boom and a budget surplus?

But the recent tax cuts have been followed by a massive deficit and the weakest rebound in capital spending since the depression.

Since WW II real gdp growth has averaged 4% under dem administrations and 3% under republicans. The total return of the s&p 500 has been over 15% under democrats and barely 10%
under republicans.

If you want to live like a republican vote democratic.

Posted by: spencer at September 29, 2006 07:51 PM | Permalink to this comment

We have to vote for the Khmer Rouge, because the Democrats would spend more.

Man, I wish I could fit that on a legible bumper sticker.

Posted by: Anderson at September 29, 2006 08:39 PM | Permalink to this comment

These are incompetents at the helm, not serious war leaders.

Bush actually made this pretty obvious when he explained his decision to go to war. "The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other."

This is the sort of statement that could have only been made by a president who, either as a result of incompetence or a simple lack of interest, is not serious about protecting the United States from terrorist attacks.

First, chemical and biological weapons aren't all that deadly. The sarin attacks in the Tokyo subway system killed 12 people. The anthrax letters in the United State killed 5. Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists are another matter, but Bush acknowledged that Iraq didn't have them and wouldn't get them in the forseeable future. (He words this acknowledgement cleverly, worning ominously that Iraq might get nuclear weapons "some day.")

Second, Bush ignores the lesson of the 9/11 attacks, which is that terrorists can use our own infrastructure against us to devastating effect. A chemical attack using a small amount of toxic chemicals smuggled into Iraq isn't going to achieve al Qaeda's "ambitions [of] killing thousands or hundreds of thousands of people," but taking over a chemical plant in the United States and using it to vent tons of poisonous chemicals into the atmosphere could. So if you are serious about preventing terrorists from using chemical weapons, you don't try and prevent them from importing small quantities from abroad; you protect chemical plants from attack. Bush, you may recall, opposed that idea.

Third, the CIA had concluded that Saddam and al Qaeda were unlikely to cooperate because of ideological differences. Of course one couldn't absolutely rule out the possibility of this happening, but as sources of WMD go, Iraq would not be particularly high on the list. What was Bush doing about the other possible sources of WMD for al Qaeda (such as the nuclear material floating around the former Soviet Union)? The answer is: not much.

Why did so few people note that the emperor was wearing no clothes? Partly it is the same dynamic that is decribed in the Hans Christian Anderson story: the political right was prepared to attack anyone who questioned the President. But I think it is also that most Americans, myself included, wanted very deeply to believe that Bush was up to the task of dealing with the terrorist threat against the United States.

Posted by: Kenneth Almquist at October 4, 2006 06:14 AM | Permalink to this comment