BUSH'S WAR ON LIFE SUPPORT / CHENEY STILL IN DENIAL
Where there is no truth, there is no energy. Where there is no energy, there is no spirit. Where there is no spirit, there is no life. Only the presence and articulation of truth is life force : Marianne Williamson
Bush and his war are on life support for there is no spirit, there is no life, there is no energy in his words or posture. Where there is no truth, there is no energy ~ for this illegal preemptive war and occupation was and still is based on lies, fabrications and deception.
Cheney, like an evil dark shadow, looms ominously at Bush's shoulder ~ still defiant, still in denial and still convinced that their path is the right path.
Bush is going through the motions on his so called " listening tour " ~ for their minds are obviously made up and only cutting the funding or impeachment proceedings can stop them now.
Right now is a most dangerous time ~ for Iran has just switched to the euro from the dollar, Gates wants another attack carrier group to join up with the Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf, Sanctions are about to be placed on Iran and General John Abizaid ( who was against a troop surge ) has just resigned.
The ChickenHawks ( led by Cheney ) may want one more chance to impose their preemptive will before the new Congress is seated in early January.
JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY, Miami Herald, has noted this dangerous desperation and writes yesterday of its consequences.
Excerpt: " The power brokers in Washington spent the week carefully arranging fig leaves and tasteful screens to cover the emperor's nakedness while he was busy pretending to listen hard to everyone with an opinion about Iraq while hearing nothing ... Only Bush's definition of reality carries any weight with him and therein lies the tragedy -- both his and ours... He'll march stubbornly onward without any real change of course until high noon on January 20, 2009, when his successor will inherit both the hard decision to pull out of Iraq and the back bills for his reckless, feckless misadventure ... Keep a sharp eye on Cheney. Desperate men do desperate things. "
Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/12/21.html
Desperation in the White House
BY JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
The power brokers in Washington spent the week carefully arranging fig leaves and tasteful screens to cover the emperor's nakedness while he was busy pretending to listen hard to everyone with an opinion about Iraq while hearing nothing.
Sometime early in the new year, President Bush will go on national television to tell a disgruntled American public what he has decided should be done to salvage ''victory'' from the jaws of certain defeat in the war he started.
The word on the street, or in the Pentagon rings, is that he'll choose to beef up U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq by 20,000 to 30,000 troops by various sleight-of-hand maneuvers ~ extending the combat tours of soldiers and Marines who are nearing an end to their second or third year in hell and accelerating the shipment of others into that hell ~ and send them into the bloody streets of Baghdad.
These additional troops are expected to restore order and calm the bombers and murderers when 9,000 Americans already in the sprawling capital couldn't. They're expected to do this even when Bush's favorite (for now) Iraqi politician, Prime Minister Nouri Kamel al-Maliki, refuses to allow them to act against his primary benefactor, the anti-American cleric Moqtada al Sadr and his Shiite Muslim Mahdi Army militiamen who kill both Americans and Sunni Arabs.
This hardly amounts to a ''new way forward'' unless that definition includes a new path deeper into the quicksand of a tribal and religious civil war where whatever Bush eventually decides is already inadequate and immaterial.
The military commanders on the ground -- from Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the U.S. Central Command, to his generals in Iraq -- have said flatly that more American troops aren't the answer and aren't wanted. For them, it's obvious that only a political decision -- an Iraqi political decision -- has even the possibility of producing an acceptable outcome.
The White House hopes that its much-trumpeted reshuffling of a failed strategy and flawed tactics will buy time for their bad luck to change miraculously. That this time will be bought and paid for with the lives and futures of our soldiers and Marines -- and their families -- apparently means little to these wise men who've never heard a shot fired in anger.
This president has made it painfully obvious that he has no intention of listening to anyone who doesn't believe that he's going to win in Iraq. He'll march stubbornly onward without any real change of course until high noon on January 20, 2009, when his successor will inherit both the hard decision to pull out of Iraq and the back bills for his reckless, feckless misadventure.
The midterm election that handed control of Congress to the Democrats can be ignored. His own approval rating in the polls, now at an all-time low of 27 percent -- likewise means little or nothing.
Only Bush's definition of reality carries any weight with him and therein lies the tragedy -- both his and ours.
James Baker was sent to Washington by the original George Bush, No. 41, to salvage something out of the mess that his son, Bush No. 43, has made of his presidency and the world. The Baker commission labored mightily and produced, if little else, some truth: That the situation in Iraq is dire and rapidly growing worse.
It's also clear, however, that Bush the son is paying no more than lip service to the Baker report. He doesn't want Dad's help, and the idea that he once again needs to be rescued from the consequences of his mistakes -- as he had to be so often back in Texas -- can only have hardened his resolve to stay the course.
This is akin to a drowning man who pushes away a life preserver just before he sinks for the last time. Can nothing save this man from himself -- from the voices that only he hears telling him that he, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, will have his reputation and his place in American history restored and burnished long after his death?
What will happen to that impossible dream in the coming year if the congressional Democrats begin to do their job, issuing subpoenas and holding oversight hearings into the looting of billions from the national treasury by defense contractors and other fat-cat donors to the GOP?
What will happen if everything that President Bush does to string things along in Iraq fails, as has everything else he has done there so far, and the Iraqis ask, order or drive us out of their country?
Did you notice that at every stop on the president's information-gathering tour this week, there was a very familiar face looming over his shoulder?
It can be argued that Bush understood little about war and peace and diplomacy and honesty in government. Vice President Cheney understood all of it, and he bears much of the responsibility for what's gone on in Washington and in Iraq for the last six years. Keep a sharp eye on him. Desperate men do desperate things.
Joseph L. Galloway is former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers ~ jlgalloway2@cs.com
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net
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