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Sunday, January 14, 2007 - 20:23:39

The Enduring Wisdom of Garrison Keillor

                                     Good Time for a Heart-to-Heart Chat
                                                      January 2, 2007

As the new Congress convenes this week and Speaker Pelosi ascends to the rostrum, you have to wish them all well. These are the kids who got up in school assembly and spoke on Armistice Day and were captains of teams and organized class projects to do good works, a different breed from us wise guys who lurked in the halls and made fun of them, and in the end you want them and not us running your government. Yes, they had serious brown-nose tendencies and a knack for mouthing pieties, but you could count on them to do what needed doing. They were leaders. They weren't going to swipe the lunch money and buy a keg of suds.

You wonder, however, what this earnest bunch can do when things are so far out of whack as they are in Iraq. The gangland-style execution of Saddam Hussein was visible reality, a token of the bloodlust and violence that swirls around Iraq, where our forces are mired, sitting targets, aliens, fighting a colonial war in behalf of a Shiite majority that is as despotic and cruel as what came before except messier.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the limousines come and go, memoranda are set out on long polished tables, men in crisp white shirts sit at meetings and discuss how to rationalize a war that was conceived by a handful of men in arrogant ignorance and that has descended over the past four years into sheer madness.

Military men know there is no military solution here, and the State Department knows that the policy was driven by domestic politics, but who is going to tell the Current Occupant? He is still talking about victory, or undefeat, like some frat boy on meth who thinks he can step off a roof and not get hurt. The word "surge" keeps cropping up, as if we were fighting the war with electricity and not human beings.

Rational analysis is not the way to approach this administration. Bob Woodward found that out. The Bush who burst into convulsive sobs after winning re-election when his chief of staff Andrew Card said, "You've given your dad a great gift" is so far from the Bush of the photo ops as to invite closer inspection, and for that you don't want David Broder, you need a good novelist.

Here we have a slacker son of a powerful patrician father who resolves unconscious Oedipal issues through inappropriate acting-out in foreign countries. Hello? All the king's task forces can gather together the shards of the policy, number them, arrange them, but it never made sense when it was whole and so it makes even less sense now.

American boys in armored jackets and night scopes patrolling the streets of Baghdad are not going to pacify this country, any more than they will convert it to Methodism. They are there to die so that a man in the White House doesn't have to admit that he, George W. Bush, the decider, the one in the cowboy boots, made grievous mistakes. He approved a series of steps that he himself had not the experience or acumen or simple curiosity to question and which had been dumbed down for his benefit, and then he doggedly stuck by them until his approval ratings sank into the swamp.

He was the Great Denier of 2006, waving the flag, questioning the patriotism of anyone who dared oppose him, until he took a thumpin' and now, we are told, he is re-examining the whole matter. Except he's not. To admit that he did wrong is to admit that he is not the man his daddy is, the one who fought in a war.

Hey, we've all had issues with our dads. But do we need this many people to die so that one dude can look like a leader?

The earnest folk in Congress are prepared to discuss policy issues, to plant their butts in hard chairs and sit through jargon-encrusted reports and long dry perorations thereupon. They're trained for that. That's one good reason they're there and not you or me. But to address the war and the White House, you're talking pathology.

It's time for 41 and 43 to work something out, and they can't do it by way of James Baker or Brent Scowcroft. Pick up the phone, old man, and tell 43 you love him dearly and it's time to think about sparing the lives of American soldiers, many of whom have sons, too.

© 2007 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, INC.

Posted by Death by Inches at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments [2]

Sunday, January 07, 2007 - 16:59:14

What if?

The January issue of Vanity Fair has, on the face of it, a very satisfying article by David Rose entitled Neo Culpa. It's all about the evil scumbag neo-cons that were the architects of Bush's war for oil in Iraq, for several years the cheerleaders for the war, in fact this collection of douchebags are the heart and soul of the neo-con world. And suddenly they've turned on Bush like so much waste in a roadside Porta-Potty.


When I read it I smiled and enjoyed reading the pus bag's excuses for why this mess doesn't blow back on them. Their explanation to a man, invading Iraq and spreading democracy was a beautiful idea, Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld just fucked it up! There message is, we were right, but the Bush administration was too incompetent to carry out the beautiful plan. I personally think they and their plan are insane, but I agree that the Bush administration has never been able to find their asses with both hands. As my kind father would have said, Bush would screw up a wet dream.

After I enjoyed this good read I went upstairs to paint a bedroom and kept hearing the news on NPR on the hour and every time it led off with Bush whining about people losing  faith in the war in Iraq. This afternoon he announced that the US was neither losing nor winning the war. Is that supposed to be music to our ears? What kind of depressing Jimmy Carter talk is that? And pardon me, but if you aren't winning, you must be losing.....will we have a tie in Iraq?

So as I rolled on the paint between the news hours my sense of dread began to build. If Bush, who everyone agrees is stupid, decide that YES HE WILL win the war for oil in Iraq, what's he gonna do? The noose is tightening around his neck, he may not even be President by next Christmas. His only chance....the only rabbit he can pull out of his hat is a big fast win in Iraq. Now I'm really worried.

Should he send over 30 to 60 thousand more troops, bringing our total of troops in Iraq to around 200,000 soldiers, I believe it will just create more targets that will find their way back home in a black body bag. At best I don't believe that will tip the scales in our favor and surely not fast enough to save the Decider's ass.


That could only mean nuclear weapons, or some new secret weapon we don't know about yet. Imagine waking up tomorrow morning and hearing on the news that our troops have suddenly vanshed from Iraq. Following on the heels of that news, reports come in of gigantic explosions going off all over the Iraqi countryside. The astronauts high above the earth in the space station report that all of Iraq is glowing.  Would Americans do such a thing? Can we live with ourselves if Bush Hitlerizes the world in our name?

Or this came out today and makes me kinda wonder:
Bush "Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons"

In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb. So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted "without public knowledge and review" in 2002.


Could Bush and our new Secretary of Defense (the 23rd ex-CIA director to be involved in the deep workings of our government) be planning on germ-ing 27 million Iraqis to death in the near future. It is my opinion the only way to win the war for oil in Iraq is to kill every living human within Iraq's borders. It's pull out and come home or nuke them till they glow.....no middle ground. Who among us doubts at this point that Bush isn't crazy enough to be thinking about killing them all?  Our President, and I use the word our very loosely, appears to be infected with the same lunitic mentality that told Hitler and Tojo that they could beat the Allied Forces and win WWII. The same mentality told them to use any means within their grasp to win. In their hearts they believed they were justified in order to glorify, to protect, to save their countries.

I believe George W. Bush and his puppeteer Dick Cheney could very well be entertaining ideas of killing every person in Iraq. Look how many ways they justified and lied attacking innocent little ole Iraq in the first place. Bush thinks he's Harry Truman, Cheney thinks he's God. Anythings better than losing in their minds.


I started writing this piece a couple of weeks ago and the holidays and depression fell on my head like twin rocks. In the mean time I've thought of another possibility that could be waiting for us around the next bend. The possibility that Bush-Cheney will do nothing but continue down the exact same road they have been on for going on 4 years. I'm saying they will stay the course, looking neither right nor left and this time next year our troops will still be sitting ducks, the US body count will be 1500 higher and we'll still be losing the war for oil in Iraq.

Plainly, Bush-Cheney are out of ideas. This isn't a card game, they can't just fold and go home. They are 100% unwilling to give up and bring our troops home. They can't or won't ask for help. Who or what could help them anyway...they picked the wrong war to start and are reaping the misery of it. Actually the families of 3012 dead US soldiers are doing all the reaping, plus 22,022 injured US troops and the 30% of returning troops who are reported suffering from mental and/or emotional damage...that's a lot of reaping too. Imagine what skid row will look like 10 years from now.  Nam vets, move over...we have incoming.

How can we sit on our hands and allow Bush-Cheney to run out the clock?  I left out the 2000 a month average total of dead Iraqis. Are we wealthy enough and yet dead in spirit and soul enough to do nothing while 2 more years worth of people die horrible deaths? It is estimated that the Iraq War has cost Arkansas going on 3.4 billion and counting so far. There is a real possibility that we're stuck with an insane bus driver who refuses to turn the wheel right or left yet keeps his right foot press to the floor........for a whole other 2 years!


This coming week may be the first attempt to land a powerful punch to Bush's chin. He's talking more troops and Pelosi is saying no way. So far nothing has slowed the Bush train wreck down even a tiny bit. He is forging on as if the November elections never happened. I keep cheering our new found power, but then I stop and realize so far self-satisfaction is all I've gotten. If we're lucky......if that's the word for it, we'll know soon if Bush plans to nuke or germ Iraq or if he just plans to change nothing and grind up bodies until January, 2009. And we'll also find out if the Democrats have any power and if so what new low it will force the Bush administration to resort to, to stay in power. I'm counting on Congress....but in the end it may take our own military to remove Bush from office.  I say loud and clear......2007 will be a year we'll never forget.

Posted by Death by Inches at 04:59 PM | Permalink | Comments [8]

Thursday, January 04, 2007 - 22:04:11

DAY ONE

Bush has stained all hands with the blood of the innocent, all crimes done under our beautiful waving flag, all done with the approving nods of our popular Christian leaders.


All the while the Pryors and the Lincolns, when not conspiring with the Bushes, lending quiet support with their votes while pretending to be Democrats. And we shop and we party and we cut prayer meeting short to get home and watch Lost. How ironic...the lost watching Lost!


Sure enough people like Pelosi, Frank, Hoyer, Reid, Emanuel, Rangel are going to have to grab America by the short hairs, wake us up, get our attention, slap us around and make us fighting mad....a level of mad we should have achieved on our own these last 6 miserable, embarrassing, deadly years.


We must put down childish things and get to work to save the world from our own rogue government. Heads must roll. Trials must commence. Justice must land on the guilty like a ton of bricks.

After we pull out from this war of Bush & Exxon's making, we must find a way to make it up to the rest of the world. This world needs the old America back as much as we we do. Take time to look back at our history, we've always been better than this...even in our darkest hours.

 Pray-ers....this would be a real good time to start praying. There is no indication that the Bushdinistas will go peacefully. We must all do our best and hope that the year 007 is our lucky number......we're going to need all the luck in the universe.

Posted by Death by Inches at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments [6]