Just Another WTF Week in Bushland

by Ed Naha
Just once, I’d like to sit down and read or watch the news without feeling like I’ve just plunged into a Looney Tunes festival on crack.

 

Since Dubya seems to worry about his place in history, he should rest easy knowing that he will always be known as the man who transformed fact-checking into an art usually associated with tinfoil hats, eye of newt and waxed lips. This past week has been a Dubya WTF doozy.

On Monday, Attorney General Alberto “Seedy” Gonzales quit his post because, uh, it was Monday. Bush added his own insightful thoughts. “It’s sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing his important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.”

 

It gets better. Visiting the moon crater that was once called New Orleans, Bush declared, “This town is better today than it was yesterday and it’s going to be better tomorrow than it is today.” He was later joined by Little Orphan Annie, Daddy Warbucks and Sandy for a rousing rendition of “Tomorrow.”

At this point in his presidency, Bush should just wear a Napoleon hat and lisp like Daffy Duck when he appears in public. At least this will give him the opportunity to end a press conference by bouncing up and down, crossing his eyes and shouting, “woo-woo-woo.”

Last week, before an audience of veterans, Bush compared the Iraq invasion with our role in Vietnam. His conclusion? We would have succeeded in ‘Nam if we hadn’t cut and run, leading to genocide in Cambodia. So, we’re staying in Iraq. Presidential aides, at the last minute, cut all references regarding Charlie Sheen and squads of flying suicider monkeys from Bush’s speech when it was discovered that he fell asleep watching “Platoon” the night before and woke up in time to catch the end of “The Wizard of Oz.”

Allan Lichtman, an American University historian, was quite impressed with Bush’s Vietnam analogy, saying, “It’s not revisionist history. It is fantasy history.”

Democratic strategist Paul Begala put it a tad more succinctly on CNN: “He’s saying, essentially, that 58,000 dead in Vietnam weren’t quite enough, that maybe we should have twice as big a tragic memorial on the Mall.

“And who’s saying it? A man who chose not to serve, took steps, used family friends to get out of serving in Vietnam, didn’t even show up for his own Guard duty, so that better, braver men could fight that war. He stood before those better, braver men today a coward in the company of heroes.”


While flogging our Iraq surge or purge or splooge, he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ national convention attendees that the U.S. had killed or captured an average of more that 1,500 al Qaeda members in Iraq every month since last January. Most independent military analysts figure that there are a total of 5,000 al Qaeda fighters in all of Iraq. Per Bush, either these guys replicate like amoebas or they’re very resilient.

He also claimed that incidents of sectarian violence have dropped since the troop surge began when, according to the Associated Press, it has doubled throughout Iraq. There’s an average of 62 Iraqis killed per day this year as opposed to 33 in 2006. So far, this year, 14,800 Iraqis have died. 13,811 died in all of 2006.

Not content to wave his rubber chicken solely at the “bad guys” in Iraq, Bush this week decided to put Iran on notice, stating that Iran’s nuclear program would cast the Middle East “under a shadow of nuclear holocaust” and that Iran was “the world’s leading supporter of terrorism.”

As the Cheney choir sang “Macho Man,” Bush got all beady-eyed and said: “I will take all actions necessary to protect our troops. I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”

Coupla questions. What murderous activities? And how are we going to confront them? Rumors have been spreading that Iranian militants have been waving their testicles in our troops’ general direction from their side of the border. Maybe this is a job for Senator Larry “wide stance” Craig.

So, how’s Iraq goin’? Apparently notso hotso. Because of our quagmire, local police agencies across our nation are encountering a shortage of ammunition. Seriously. Ya see, troops are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year in both Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving some American police forces to train their rookies with paintball guns. Others train by shooting blanks. (Add your own punchline.)

Things are going so well over there that last week’s rather dire National Intelligence Estimate was “tweaked” by General David Petraeus, softening some of the gloomy conclusions. (This is the same General Petraeus who will give his “the surge is working” report in a week or so and was the man in charge when 200,000 American weapons “disappeared” in Iraq.)

This tinkering made the Government Accountability Office so nervous that someone actually leaked the first draft of the GAO’s Iraq assessment before anyone at the Pentagon could turn it into a creative writing assignment. It basically says that Iraq is a mess in terms of combat and that, in terms of the Iraqi government, 13 of the 18 benchmarks designed to judge that government’s performance in the political and security arenas haven’t been met.

At the White House, officials argued that the GAO report, which was required by legislation President Bush signed last spring, was unrealistic because it assigned “pass or fail” grades to each benchmark, rather than assessing whether the Iraqis have made progress toward reaching the benchmark goals.

“A bar was set so high, that it was almost not to be able to be met,” White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

In other words, the Iraqi government can have a lot more wiggle room than kids trapped in Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” automaton approach to education.

 If you don’t think Iraq has totally altered the fabric of what we laughingly call our society, try these headlines on for size: “PENTAGON PROBES IF US ARMS FOR IRAQ DIVERTED TO TURKEY,” “PENTAGON PROBES MISSING WEAPONS AND CONTRACT FRAUD,” “ARMY TO PROBE 18,000 CONTRACTS” and “MILITIAS SEIZING CONTROL OF IRAQI ELECTRICITY GRID.”

Oh, yeah, Bush wants another $50 billion this fall for his Crusade. That’s on top of the $142 billion already requested for fiscal 2008.

To keep all of America up on the good news coming from Iraq, the Pentagon is setting up a 24/7 Communications Desk that will pump out propaganda, I mean, hard news from Baghdad. Heck, if they can’t win hearts and minds over t’har, they might as well give it a shot over here…although they might have to use paintball guns.

Iraq-o-mania with all its Orwellian overtones continues to be a crowd pleaser in the halls of the White House, for sure. In a newspaper interview, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, revealed that nosy Americans who wanted to know the details of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with all its warrentless snoopin’ and a peakin’, are risking the lives of their friends and neighbors.

 

After revealing some top secret details concerning FISA, he ended his chat with reporter Chris Roberts asking Chris to consider whether enemies of the U.S. would read the interview and scoop up deadly information.

The newspaper printed the McConnell story, leading one to conclude that the terrorists have let their subscriptions to the “El Paso Times” lapse.

How’s this for the freedom fries fans out there? In an article entitled “SCIENTISTS DRUG-TEST WHOLE CITIES,” AP reporter Seth Borenstein revealed that Oregon State University researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city’s sewer plant.

David Murray, chief scientist for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the idea interests his agency.

Here’s another fun piece emanating from a TV station in Daytona Beach: “LOCAL TROOPS DEPLOY TO NATION’S CAPITAL.” The article stated that members of the 1st Battalion 265 Air Defense Artillery have mobilized and are headed first to Fort Bliss and, then, for federal active duty in the capitol region where the troops will be deployed for a year.

They’ve been ordered to D.C. to operate high-tech weapons systems against any potential air threat.

Perhaps the ambience generated by our Giggler-in-Chief and all his minions have led to this final headline: “U.S. PAIN-KILLER USE GOES THROUGH ROOF – 5 MAJOR DRUGS UP 90% OVER 8 YEARS.” The figures, put together by the Associated Press through Drug Enforcement Administration stats, only track the years 1997 to 2005.

In 2005, more than 200,000 pounds of codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine were purchased at retail stores. That total is enough to give more than 300 milligrams of painkillers to every person in the country…or, as Rush Limbaugh refers to it, “breakfast.”

There was no word on the amount of ACME mallets purchased by those with no health insurance.

So, put those Napoleon hats on, guys and gals. Cross your eyes and start hoppin’. Woo-woo-woo! We have a new WTF week to look forward to!

 

 

 

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