In a speech timed to avoid mainstream media detection, with the press corps preoccupied with the Alito confirmation showhearings, President Bush today magnanimously and courageously proposed to allow Americans to actually debate the war in Iraq, despite there being elections scheduled in the coming calendar year. Funny, I hadn't realized that we now need a Presidential Benediction before we dare speak. Inalienable rights and all that. But hold on, now, don't go thinking Bush has gone all free-love hippie on us, as there will be limits on this free speechifying, and he is going to be the guy calling the fouls:
"We face an added challenge in the months ahead: The campaign season will soon be upon us -- and that means our nation must carry on this war in an election year. There is a vigorous debate about the war in Iraq today, and we should not fear the debate. It's one of the great strengths of our democracy that we can discuss our differences openly and honestly -- even in times of war. Yet we must remember there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate -- and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas. . . . The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. . . . When our soldiers hear politicians in Washington question the mission they are risking their lives to accomplish, it hurts their morale. . . . So I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account, and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy -- not comfort to our adversaries."
Bush is for Free Speech the same way his EPA is for "Clean Skies". Of course it is a hack partisan speech, before another hand-picked, "you-betcha Sir!" audience, so I hardly expect eloquence, but his speech, equating serious dissent with disloyalty, is a grave insult to Americans and patriots everywhere. It is sickening to see Bush again using our military as his human shield against the normal accountability of our democracy.
He sends our young soldiers to fall and die in his elective, fraud-in-the-inducement war in Iraq without adequate armor, logistical support or even a decent interval of real aforethought about the consequences. There's no exit strategy? There's no strategy, period. This Administration uses the military in a way that can only be described as contemptuous. The lives and welfare of our troops are tweaked throughout the American election cycle like they're just another of Karl Rove's little toys, jerked hither and yon. They are set upon the dirty tasks of the worst of our Chickenhawk Neocons back home, set to torture and murder under color of administration "authorization", although that "authority" seems to dissipate like smoke in a haze of legal memorandum and specious legal argument when light is shown on our dark practices, leaving the grunts and the brass behind to take still another hit for the Administration. Our men and women are set upon tasks that violate their own and our American heritage and our laws, and that defile the military's code of honor, earned at such steep price.
The military is left to hunker down without the benefit of a coherent mission, huddling behind shabby, cheap armor, while off-budget money gushes all over the debris around them to be siphoned off by who-knows-what. Every dollar down Chilabi's blackhole, every dollar misappropriated by some conservative-connected contractor corporation, is a dollar that could have gone to save the arm, the leg, the face, or the life of one of our under-armored soldiers.
But it is irresponsible, it is disloyal, it is treachery, to take note or to speak of the grave misconduct of this war by the Bush administration? We are to stand mutely by while our military is dissipated and degraded by these Administration creatures? We are permitted to ask "how?" but not "why"? In Bush's speech, the only honest inquiry concerning the war is the methodology of its prosecution. He seems to be operating under the impression that having put the lie over to get us into Iraq, he is freed from the consequences of it, even as our men and women continue to suffer and die in service to it.
"We face an added challenge in the months ahead: The campaign season will soon be upon us -- and that means our nation must carry on this war in an election year. There is a vigorous debate about the war in Iraq today, and we should not fear the debate. It's one of the great strengths of our democracy that we can discuss our differences openly and honestly -- even in times of war. Yet we must remember there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate -- and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas. . . . The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. . . . When our soldiers hear politicians in Washington question the mission they are risking their lives to accomplish, it hurts their morale. . . . So I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account, and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy -- not comfort to our adversaries."
Bush is for Free Speech the same way his EPA is for "Clean Skies". Of course it is a hack partisan speech, before another hand-picked, "you-betcha Sir!" audience, so I hardly expect eloquence, but his speech, equating serious dissent with disloyalty, is a grave insult to Americans and patriots everywhere. It is sickening to see Bush again using our military as his human shield against the normal accountability of our democracy.
He sends our young soldiers to fall and die in his elective, fraud-in-the-inducement war in Iraq without adequate armor, logistical support or even a decent interval of real aforethought about the consequences. There's no exit strategy? There's no strategy, period. This Administration uses the military in a way that can only be described as contemptuous. The lives and welfare of our troops are tweaked throughout the American election cycle like they're just another of Karl Rove's little toys, jerked hither and yon. They are set upon the dirty tasks of the worst of our Chickenhawk Neocons back home, set to torture and murder under color of administration "authorization", although that "authority" seems to dissipate like smoke in a haze of legal memorandum and specious legal argument when light is shown on our dark practices, leaving the grunts and the brass behind to take still another hit for the Administration. Our men and women are set upon tasks that violate their own and our American heritage and our laws, and that defile the military's code of honor, earned at such steep price.
The military is left to hunker down without the benefit of a coherent mission, huddling behind shabby, cheap armor, while off-budget money gushes all over the debris around them to be siphoned off by who-knows-what. Every dollar down Chilabi's blackhole, every dollar misappropriated by some conservative-connected contractor corporation, is a dollar that could have gone to save the arm, the leg, the face, or the life of one of our under-armored soldiers.
But it is irresponsible, it is disloyal, it is treachery, to take note or to speak of the grave misconduct of this war by the Bush administration? We are to stand mutely by while our military is dissipated and degraded by these Administration creatures? We are permitted to ask "how?" but not "why"? In Bush's speech, the only honest inquiry concerning the war is the methodology of its prosecution. He seems to be operating under the impression that having put the lie over to get us into Iraq, he is freed from the consequences of it, even as our men and women continue to suffer and die in service to it.
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