Senate Panel Approves Defense Nominee
Tony Snow: Bush Disagrees With Gates, Says We Are ‘Winning’
One of the most disturbing qualities that Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader displays with distressing regularity is arrogance. It’s not your garden variety, “I’m better/smarter/richer than you are” arrogance. No, Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s brand of arrogance is that of pure Evil, venal megalomania- the sort of Machiavellian power trip that makes Pol Pot and Kim Jong-il look like choir boys. Imagine Papa Doc Duvalier with virtually unlimited resources.
This sorry excuse for a Chief Executive dumped one inept, megalomaniacal Minister of War when things got hot. Now he’s already demonstrating that he’s willing to hang his yet-to-be-confirmed Rumsfeld Replacement Unit out to dry before his name is even on the office door. Uh…d’ya think Robert Gates is beginning to wonder why he left Aggieland?
Mr. Gates’s most direct statements about Iraq came during exchanges with Senators Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is soon to take over as the panel’s chairman, and John McCain of Arizona, who will become the top-ranking Republican.
“Do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq?” asked Mr. Levin, who has pushed for announcing a date to begin withdrawals of American troops from Iraq. “No, sir,” Mr. Gates replied, adding that he did not believe the United States was losing, either….
At today’s meeting with reporters at the White House, the major topics for Press Secretary Tony Snow, as expected, were the pending release of the Iraq Study Group’s report — and today’s surprise, the admission by Robert Gates, at his confirmation hearings as new Pentagon chief, that the U.S., indeed, is not winning the war in Iraq.
Snow said that, as far as he knows, the president has not backed away from his recent statement that the U.S. is actually “winning” in Iraq. He also suggested that Gates, elsewhere in his testimony, seemed to say that maybe we weren’t losing and we weren’t winning. And he charged that the press was being too negative about all this: “What I think is demoralizing is a constant effort to try to portray this as a losing mission,” he said.
Uh, well…it IS a losing mission…at least if judged by any reasonable and objective criteria. Let’s see…. Have we defeated the enemy? No? Do we control territory militarily and exercise effective political control over it? No? Are we losing soldiers in numbers while we continue to flail away at an enemy we can’t see? Yes? Well, we’re three-for-three…which would seem to make this the very definition of a lost cause. Robert Gates might be at least slightly cognizant of this reality; Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader has clearly lost all touch with whatever passes for reality in the BushWorld Bubble.
[Snow] was also pushed on the question of the Iraq conflict turning into a civil war — which he seriously questioned. “Well, I think one of the dangers is that civil war had been used in a political context,” he said. “It’s interesting — what intervened other than an election to get people to change the label?”
A reporter shot back: “The violence got worse, I suppose.”
Yeah. Go figure….
Snow concluded: “I said it’s very difficult to figure out that there is any clear definition, and if you have one, please pass it on.”
Well, how about this: Sunnis killed Shiites, and vice-versa? If that doesn’t constitute a civil war…well, what does?
NOW CAN WE IMPEACH THE LYING BASTARD?
