"Even a pompous president with a divine mission must recognize a disaster"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Knowing that the U.S. cannot prevail in the war, the Bush administration is focusing on winning time by diverting attention from Iraq with smoke screens. There was the "bringing democracy" to the Arab world charade, with its last episode being the elections mockery in Egypt. And before that was the frenzy over the Islamic madrassas and how they gives birth to "little terrorists" -- to use the outlandish term of one CNN journalist, and so forth.

But every smoke screen has eventually dispersed to reveal the same tragic reality that the White House is laboriously trying to conceal: Bush's war has no future strategy and no quantifiable objective. Once these two elements are removed, all that is left behind is war for the sake of war, a perpetual, endless military strife devoid of meaning except that cruelly inferred by an extremist zealot or a conceited ideologue. Evidently, the Bush constituency thrives on both.

Even a pompous president with a divine mission must recognize a disaster when he sees one. It is improbable that Bush actually believes his own rhetoric of a world full of promise, which he supposedly molded, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Lebanon or Gaza.

Americans are distancing themselves from the conflict and the administration's inflated projections. Despite the duplicity and outright ignorance of the media, an estimated 300,000 antiwar protesters descended on Washington D.C. on Sept. 24, demanding an immediate end to the war in Iraq. They included representatives of 250 American families who lost loved ones in Iraq. Also coming in droves were hundreds of war veterans, many of whom became disabled in Iraq. They all came seeking answers, disclosure and an end to the incessant war madness that has engulfed their nation. But Bush is unlikely to yield. He too has a crowd for which he cares deeply, convoluted interest groups that are a bizarre mix of business elites and corporate contractors, religious fanatics and top military brass.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?eo20051003a3.htm

[gratuitous]

1. Oh, just you wait until Chimpy's next address to the nation!

Smoke screens, huh? Pompous, huh? Well, after Chimpy gets done telling us all what's what in his speech to the nation on Oct. 15, you'll think smokescreen and pompous, let me tell you!

[sepia_steel]

2. I wonder if he'll remember what it's called this time. eom

[Devil Dog Dem]

3. Don't count on it!

These guys don't recognize anything!