Because my momma taught me long ago never to call an idiot a fool, I will simply refer you to the perhaps most publicized image of the president's recent junket to China: You know, the picture where poor ol' George picks the wrong door to get out of the room, away from those naughty ol' reporters hounding him with questions, way off in that foreign land.
Oh, the face that he makes! I haven't laughed so hard since good ol' Inspector Clouseau made the same mistake ("the old closet ploy")! He might have been hapless, but he was harmless. And he always got his man.
Now, I'm not saying that Karl Rove wrote a script a la Blake Edwards (Sometimes a gaffe is just a gaffe); but against the background of the vice president's remarks (repeating what Bush himself had said before he left), it does ironically work to the president's advantage: After the spin cycle (My favorite was David Letterman joking that Bush had no "exit strategy" in China either!), we are left with the impression of a president who is not a liar but just a fool -- not exactly a flattering portrait but the lesser of the two political evils with which he has been most recently and devastatingly tarred.
"A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
-- Macbeth, Act V, Scene V
Although to be more metaphorically precise, in Iraq we have "a tiger by the tail" -- we're damned if hold on, fomenting insurgency, and we're damned if we let go, having created another Afghanistan, a breeding ground for terrorists, where none existed beforehand ... in truth.
You remember truth, don't you? The first casualty of war. And the last refuge of peace.
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