Meet the New Boss

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It was a good day for Chuck Todd. The former MSNBC host was just crowned the 12th moderator of NBC's long-standing Sunday morning talk show Meet the Press, and he scored an interview with President Obama as America is facing a new invasion of Iraq.

Bonus!

In case you missed it, Todd asked all the expected questions and got the expected answers about increased military involvement to battle ISIS (or ISIL if you prefer) in Iraq. There were few surprises and Obama again apologized for golfing after the beheading of journalist James Foley. He called it "bad optics." We at the Malloy Show -- and surely Foley's friends and family -- can think of more colorful adjectives.

But the interview was a teaser of the President's big speech to the nation this Wednesday night. Like those before him, he will attempt to sell another war with Iraq to the American people. And as Bush the First and Bush the Lessor before him, he will likely succeed. Not that the Bush Crime Family's previous war ever ended, really, but there was that glimmer of hope when Obama withdrew forces last year.

That didn't last long.

Of course, Cheney/Bush never had a defined exit strategy, or reconstruction plan, so it comes as little surprise that Islamic extremists swooped in to fill the void left when the US executed Saddam Hussein, the former puppet-leader we supported a couple of decades earlier, back when Donald Rumsfeld was Reagan's special Envoy to the Mid East, before he was Dim Son's Secretary of Defense. Confused yet? Sounds like an episode of that 70's sitcom "Soap."

Here's the irony -- Rummy was working with Saddam to prevent arms sales to Iran, likely at the same time Reagan (and Ollie North) was shipping them weapons in exchange for hostages being held by Iranian militants in Lebanon. But I digress ...

We now teeter on the brink of another surge of US forces into Iraq, purportedly to dismantle ISIS/ISIL and free the Iraqi people, er ... or secure the nation for democracy, or...or...make sure girls can wear white shoes and fly kites. Something like that. It was the typically vague Newspeak we've come to expect from our Chief Executives.

The Guardian UK has this:

"Obama said he will brief congressional leaders on Tuesday and address the nation on Wednesday to explain the administration's plan to defeat the group which controls swathes of Iraq and Syria.

"'I just want the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we're going to deal with it and to have confidence that we'll be able to deal with it,' he told NBC's Meet the Press in an interview broadcast on Sunday....

"After months of intelligence gathering, and weeks of securing US personnel in diplomatic missions, 'the next phase is now to start going on some offence,' the president said. The US will soon have more than 1,200 ground troops in Iraq assigned to Baghdad and Irbil.

"'Over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of ISIL,' he said, using an alternative name for the group which recently murdered two American journalists. 'We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We're going to shrink the territory that they control. And ultimately we're going to defeat 'em.'

"American leadership had assembled a broad-based coalition, said Obama. 'We are going to be part of an international coalition, carrying out air strikes in support of work on the ground by Iraqi troops, Kurdish troops. We are going to be helping to put together a plan for them, so that they can start retaking territory that ISIL had taken over.'"

Coalition of the willing ... going on the offense ... defeat 'em ... sure sounds familiar, doesn't it, Truthseekers?