Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Via the Center for American Progress:

According to the Financial Times, President Bush recently prompted Colin Powell for his views on Iraq. "We're losing," Powell told the president. "Mr. Bush then asked the secretary of state to leave." Similarly, a respected D.C. political tip sheet notes that "attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities [in Iraq] have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear 'bad news.'" President Bush cannot be trusted to develop a coherent Iraq strategy if his understanding of the facts on the ground amounts to a cherry-picked assemblage of bedtime stories.


Update: Here's Bush lending credence to the above report from today's news conference

QUESTION: Mr. President, Senator Ted Kennedy recently repeated his characterization of Iraq as a, quote, "quagmire," and has called it your Vietnam.

And the questioning of Alberto Gonzales and Condi Rice in the Senate has been largely used by Democrats to criticize your entire Iraq program, especially what you're trying to do postwar.

I wonder if you have any response to those criticisms. And what kind of effect do you think these statements have on the morale of our troops and of the confidence of the Iraqi people that what you're trying to do over there is going to succeed?

BUSH: I think the Iraqi people are wondering whether or not this nation has the will necessary to stand with them as a democracy evolves.

The enemy would like nothing more than the United States to precipitously pull out and withdraw before the Iraqis are prepared to defend themselves. Their objective is to stop the advance of democracy. Freedom scares them.

Zarqawi said something interesting the other day: that, you know, he was talking democracy and how terrible democracy is.

We believe that people ought to be allowed to express themselves. And we believe that people ought to decide the fates of their government.

And so the notion that somehow we're not making progress, I just don't subscribe to.

BUSH: I mean, we're having elections and I think people need to put this moment in history in proper context.

That context, of course, starts with whether or not the world will be better off with Saddam Hussein in power and whether or not America'd be more secure.
There are many things to fairly (and unfairly) criticize this president before. But this alternative ("reality-based") problem that he has is a fair game. He doesn't subscribe to this notion? Facts be damned. We're making progress. He is right on the point that perhaps 20 years from now, we will be looking at a stable flourshing democracy in Iraq. But that doesn't change the current facts on the ground that it is a disaster. The historical "context" he wants people to be mindful of hasn't been written yet! This is when one really has to wonder about the mental capacity of this man. If he is pushing political spin points, he could certainly do better job and come up with better non-answers. The fact that he can't even spin coherently really makes me question the world he personally lives in.

# posted 10:20 AM