Tuesday, January 28, 2003

I feel Better After Bush’s Speech I went into tonight dreading the State of the Union speech.  In particular I was sick of the jingoistic media coverage—so I watched on PBS.  I came away thinking I saw Bush weaker and more irresolute than I expected.   He is not invincible.  I loved Gary Locke’s (Washington Governor) democratic response.  I don’t know how many watched it, but it was carried on the networks.    I think there is just the faint whiff of blood in the water.  You can see it when the first citizen quoted by ABC news says Bush won’t say how he’s paying for the war, and will leave us with a trillion dollar deficit, and then the next person says she sees no evidence that Iraq is a threat.   You see it when Daschle gets up and repeats his credibility gap charge.  I think the collapse of business confidence and the continued sinking of the economy are starting to undermine Bush’s ability to dominate the agenda.    Unfortunately, none of this means that we won’t go to war, or that the mean spirited right will not viciously attack any moderates.  Remember these are the same guys who stopped at nothing to savage Clinton, and if their golden figurehead starts to wilt, they will be terrible and destructive in their rage.    The one thing that totally surprised me was Bush’s mentioning the aluminum tubes imported by Iraq, and claiming they were for nuclear weapons.  I nearly fell out of my chair.  Just yesterday, the head of the International Atomic Agency spoke to the security council, saying that the tubes were not suitable for nuclear weapons centrifuges, that they were the wrong type of alloy, and that the analysis of the inspectors totally supported Iraq’s claim that these were imported for use in conventional and allowed programs.   Maybe Bush’s speech writers couldn’t fix things quickly enough as one excuse after another gets obliterated by the facts.   In the same vein, on PBS, I couldn’t believe the guy from the weekly standard going on and on about new intelligence about Iraq purchasing uranium in Africa.  This was put out by the British last September, and is certainly not news to anyone following the story.   It seems that the war supporters are as desperate as Bush is to find some evidence, any evidence, that might help them.   I am encouraged because ultimately, I believe Lincoln's saying that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.   Bush is frightened of Iraq because he genuinely does not know what to do about terrorism, and so he is making up these horrific what if scenarios, like what if Albanian communists smuggled a death ray into New York and destroyed the stock exchange.  To prevent this possibility, we need to destroy and occupy Albania?    If it ever would occur to Bush to ask what has caused an upsurge in terrorism against the U.S., he might find less fanciful ways to make us safer.    Lots of commentary on the speech is on Daily Kos. 11:06:46 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 2/2/2003; 5:54:55 PM.