WH strategy: make hay while the sons (and daughters) die

With the 9/11 anniversary and midterm elections looming, Bush used a question about the crisis in Lebanon to trot out old lies and attempt to make political hay. During a press conference/PR event form Crawford, President Bush, with his wife Secretary Rice by his side, once again conflated 9/11 with the crisis du jour in the Middle East. . . and blamed his predecessor for it, to boot.

In a ridiculously long-winded non-answer to a question about what might entice Hezbollah to the negotiation table, Bush said:

Not only do terrorists try to stop the advance of democracy through killing innocent people within the countries, they also try to shake the will of the Western world by killing innocent Westerners. They try to spread their jihadist message, a message I call—it's totalitarian in nature—Islamic radicalism, Islamic fascism. They try to spread it as well by taking the attack to those of us who love freedom.

And as far as this administration is concerned, we clearly see the problem and we're going to continue to work to advance, stable, free countries.

We don't expect every country to look like the United States, but we do want countries to accept some basic conditions for a vibrant society: human rights, human decency, the power of the people to determine the fate of their governments.

And admittedly, this is hard work because it flies in the face of previous policy, which basically said stability is more important than form of government.

And as a result of that policy, anger and resentment bubbled forth with an attack—with a series of attacks, the most dramatic of which was on September the 11th.

And your question is, Can we get people—a terrorist group to change their attitude?

Well, what we can do is we can get state sponsors of terror to understand this behavior is unacceptable and that we can convince some people in terrorist groups that there is a better way forward for them and their families.

Let me see here. . . Hezbollah, Iran. . . Shi’a. Al Qaeda, 9/11 hijackers. . . Wahhabist Sunni. Syria. . . Ba’athist. . . supported the Maronites in the Lebanese civil war. . . crushed a Sunni Moslem Brotherhood uprising at home. Which, Mr. President, are the Islamic radicals? Which are the fascists? Do you even know which are the Star-Belly Sneetches anymore?

And which state was the “state sponsor” of the 9/11 attacks? Or the other al Qaeda attacks?

And who was president on 9/11/01. . . and for the ten months prior?

And how many more innocent people are going to die while you mouth off about things you don’t understand while trying to score partisan points?

I call bullshit. Big, heaping piles. Why won’t the establishment media?