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Baghdad George
By Charley
Reese
- I guess it was inevitable. Someone has compared
President George Bush to "Baghdad Bob," the inadvertently comical Iraqi
information minister who kept insisting Iraq was winning the war even as
American tanks gathered outside his office.
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- This came after the president's latest press
conference, when he said attacks were increasing in Iraq because the
occupation was so successful. In other words, the situation is worse
because the situation is better. The more successful we are, the more
Americans and Iraqis will die from bombs and ambushes. It was Bill
Press, the other half of the TV show with Pat Buchanan, who came up with
that wisecrack.
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- The president's handlers are wise to keep him away
from news conferences. He doesn't handle them well. At this one, you
could see from his facial _expression_ that he was not happy to be there.
He was, as most politicians are, defensive and evasive. He absolutely
refuses to acknowledge that the people attacking Americans in Iraq are
anyone but Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists. Actually, most of
them are probably just Iraqis who resent foreign occupation and the bad
behavior of some American troops.
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- If he read newspapers, which he told a TV interviewer
that he doesn't, he would know that. Even one of the American officers
in Iraq recently slipped up and, in an interview with a journalist,
referred to the guerrillas as "freedom fighters." There is scant
evidence of any sizable number of foreign terrorists, at least none that
secretive American officials have been willing to make public. One guy
shot the other day by Iraqis had a Syrian passport, but that doesn't
mean he was necessarily a Syrian. People in the terrorist business
usually have several passports.
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- And, of course, the president made no mention
whatsoever of weapons of mass destruction. During the marketing campaign
for the war, he hardly opened his mouth without talking about weapons of
mass destruction. He refuses to acknowledge that he made a mistake when
he said major combat was over last May. That's what irritates me most
about politicians. They're human. They can make mistakes. Why not say
so?
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- What's wrong with saying: "Yes, at that time, I
thought major combat was over. I knew there would be some resistance,
but it's been more deadly and lasted longer than I anticipated." Nobody
would hold that against him. But, no, he's perfect. It reminds me of
that old joke that says, "We Southerners may not always be right, but,
by God, we ain't never wrong." At any rate, now the guerrillas have
killed more Americans than the Iraqi army did during that major
combat.
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- He keeps repeating that canard that "terrorists hate
freedom." Nonsense. There is no terrorist in the world who is a
terrorist because he hates freedom. By far, the majority of terrorists
are fighting for freedom of some group that doesn't have it. In the case
of Iraq, it is freedom from American occupation; with the Irish
Republican Army, it was freedom from British rule; with the
Palestinians, freedom from Israeli occupation; and so forth. It is
absurd to suppose that a human being sitting around suddenly stands up
and says: "You know, I hate freedom. I think I'll go blow myself
up."
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- What one wants in a president, besides basic honesty,
are intelligence and sound judgment. One wants someone who is well-read
in history and geography and has experience so that he can properly
assess situations and make wise decisions.
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- Sadly, I think that's where the president fails,
despite his good intentions. To admit that he relies on his staff to
tell him what's going on in the world is to admit that he puts himself
in the position of being manipulated by his staff. No good leader would
rely on his staff without developing his own independent sources of
information, lest he find himself being manipulated into following the
staff's agenda instead of his own.
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- He was certainly told that Iraqis would be dancing in
the streets welcoming us, but the only dancing was done by Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz when rockets went off in the floor
beneath his hotel room and he leaped out of bed and frantically put his
clothes on to get out of there.
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- � 2003 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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- http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20031107/index.php
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The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in
anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans
l'anarchie"
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