My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest...no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak... Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism...true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.": Gandhi
To that end, we must continue to siphon out the truth and lay waste the continual fear mongering of the Cheney/Bush administration.
Fortunately, The Center for American Progress is up to the task as they describe Bush's new bubble of denial .
Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2007/04/19.html
Bush's New Bubble
President Bush met today with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to discuss Congress's Iraq withdrawal legislation. Bush has spent the last several weeks driving home three misleading talking points justifying his intent to veto this bill over the wishes of the American public.
To aid his efforts, Bush turned to some reliable crutches: in his latest Iraq speech on Monday, Bush repeatedly referenced September 11th and conjured dark visions of "death and destruction...here in America" if U.S. troops were to withdraw. The result: more people oppose Bush's position, and support a safe and responsible end to the war, than they did two months ago.
As Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin writes, "Bush's public campaign to push back against Congressional demands for withdrawal from Iraq is becoming highly reminiscent of his failed effort two years ago to win support for a radical overhaul of Social Security." The more the President speaks, the more isolated he becomes. Behold Bush's new bubble.
SOCIAL SECURITY PRIVATIZATION REDUX: The Washington Post reported this week that 58 percent of Americans trust Congress to do a better job of handling the Iraq war than they trust Bush. The Post pointed out that Bush had "taken advantage of the congressional spring recess to pound" war critics over their legislation. "Despite those efforts, Bush has actually lost a little ground" to Congress, which was trusted by 54 percent to set Iraq policy in February. The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum noted, "This reminds me of the Social Security fiasco: every time Bush opened his mouth on the subject, polls moved in the opposite direction. Now the same thing is happening with Iraq." One day after Bush "used a backdrop of military families to declare: 'We should not legislate defeat in this vital war,'" Froomkin observed, "The meticulously choreographed settings, the carefully controlled audiences, the mind-numbing repetition of hoary talking points (with a particular emphasis on stoking fears) -- it's like deja vu. And so is the result: A public that is apparently more turned off to Bush's ideas the more he talks about them."
ESCALATION STILL NOT WORKING: New evidence continues to emerge that Bush's escalation policy is not working. Last month "marked the first time that the U.S. military suffered four straight months of 80 or more fatalities," McClatchy news reported. "April, with 58 service members killed through Monday, is on pace to be one of the deadliest months of the conflict for American forces." Iraqi civilian casualties across the country rose 10 percent from February to March. Iraq's political benchmarks are not being met; the latest Brookings Institution Iraq index, released two days ago, finds "no progress thus far" on reversing de-Baathification, scheduling provincial elections, drafting a plan for national reconciliation, amending the constitution, or reaching a political agreement on disbanding the militias.
Last month saw the deadliest attack since the war began, a suicide truck bombing in Tal Afar that killed 152 people in a Shiite area. (Seventy people died in retaliatory attacks led by Shiite militias, including government security forces.) Last week's suicide bombing in the Iraqi parliament was the deadliest attack yet inside the Green Zone. A Red Cross report issued last week said the "disastrous" situation in Iraq is "getting worse, with mothers appealing for someone to pick up the bodies on the street so their children will be spared the horror of looking at them on their way to school."
(Center for American Progress senior fellow Lawrence Korb returned this weekend from a 10-day visit to Baghdad and uncovered results that affirm that "the surge is not working." Read his full trip diary.)
OpEdNews columnist Allen L Roland is available for comments & & interviews. ( allen@allenroland.com )
