BREAKING: PRESIDENT BUSH ADMITS MISTAKE

From an interview with Barbara Walters:

“I watch what I say. I said some things in the first term that were probably a little blunt. ‘Bring it on’ was a little blunt. I was really speaking to our troops, but it came out and had a different connotation, different meanings for others,” he told Walters.

Sorry, false alarm. He doesn’t admit to saying anything wrong; we’re the ones who made the mistake in misunderstanding his meaning. And we’re not the only ones:

More recently, guerrillas in Iraq have used the president’s words in a propaganda video narrated in English, according to the Reuters news agency. The narrator of the video says, “George W. Bush, you have asked us to ‘bring it on.’ And so help me, [we will ] like you never expected. Do you have another challenge?” The video then shows explosions around a U.S. military vehicle.

Wonderful.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Accomplished!

Then:

Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there — and there they must be defeated.

President George W. Bush
September 7, 2003
And now:

Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of “professionalized” terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director’s think tank.
Iraq provides terrorists with “a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills,” said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. “There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries.”

“Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground”
Today’s Washington Post
Well, we didn’t find those weapons of mass destruction, but we did succeed in making Iraq the central front in the “war on terror.” Great job guys.

Changed Equation

From The Daily Show, here’s what the White House means when they say September 11 “changed the equation”:

September 11 + x* = Shut up!

* Whatever we say.

Kicking The Can

Vice President Cheney today:

Now, the year 2018 may seem like a long way off, and in politics there is always a temptation to kick the can down the road — hoping that long-term problems might simply disappear, or leaving them for someone else to worry about. That is not how President Bush views his job. As he’s said many times, he ran for the presidency to confront big challenges, not to pass them along to future Presidents and future Congresses.

Yes indeed. We wouldn’t want leaders who passed long-term problems off for someone else to fix, would we?

Juneuary

Conditions are about to make a dramatic change, but currently it’s 72 degrees at Resonance world headquarters.
Thus far January has been a month that even I’m hard pressed to complain about. I’ve already gotten over 80 miles of bicycling in, and it could have been even more. Daylight has been more of a limiting factor than the thermometer.
This is the way winter should be.

A: Way Too Much

Q: How much air time have the news channels given to that rescue of the guy with no pants dangling from a bridge over a swollen California river?