No Second Thoughts

Our hard-headed decisive leader strikes again:

President Bush said he had no regrets about donning a flight suit to give his “Mission Accomplished” speech on Iraq in May 2003 and would do it all over again if he had the chance, according to excerpts from an television interview released on Sunday.
When asked by Fox News if he still would have put on a flight suit to declare major combat operations in Iraq over, Bush replied, “Absolutely.”

I guess that means we’ve had 900 Americans die in “minor” combat operations, if that’s any comfort to their families.
Several bloggers have noted how this response illustrates how detached from reality Bush is. But it really shouldn’t surprise anyone, should it? For months Bush has been boasting on his ability to smash U.S. foreign policy into the Iraqi wall without blinking. Do you think he’s going to lose sleep over a speech?
I think the more startling or disturbing part of the released excerpts is this:

Amid a rising U.S. death toll and a rash of abductions and beheadings in Iraq, some members of Bush’s own Republican Party have criticized him for not doing enough to secure insurgent areas in Iraq sooner.
But Bush said he also did not regret the decision to withdraw U.S. forces from the rebel stronghold of Falluja earlier this year because he believed the conflict there could have jeopardized the June handover of sovereignty to Iraqis.

You remember Falluja, don’t you? It’s the place where, against the military leaders’ best judgment Bush ordered a rushed attack against the city’s insurgency, then ordered them to pull out before they had finished their objectives. And the reason why? Because Bush didn’t want military operations interfering with the symbolic transfer of power.
How typical. The top priority in Bush world is not in doing the hard work to fix problems, it’s to “keep promises” for use on the campaign trail and to conduct meaningless photo-ops. And that’s one of the reasons Iraq is a mess today.

Heated Rhetoric

We don’t need this:

The Bush administration’s failure to shut down al-Qaida and its bungled efforts to rebuild Iraq have fueled the insurgency and made America more vulnerable to a nuclear attack by terrorists, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said in his latest screed against the president’s war policies.
Kennedy, in remarks prepared for delivery to George Washington University students Monday, said that by shifting attention from Osama bin Laden to Iraq, Bush has increased the danger of a ”nuclear 9-11.”

I agree with the general proposition that a number of the Bush administration’s decisions have made us more vulnerable to terrorism. And this might even include nuclear weapons, as Kennedy asserts. But unless Kennedy has specific intelligence pointing this direction, we don’t need any more people ratcheting up the national fear factor. The terrorist-related rhetoric in this campaign is spiraling out of control, as many other important national issues are ignored. I’ve criticized Bush/Cheney ’04 for some of their comments, and the same fair-and-balanced guideline applies here. Unless someone has evidence that al Qaeda has a nuclear project in the works, I think we’ve heard enough about mushroom clouds for one campaign.

Catching Flies

A reader at War and Peace makes an excellent point: if part of the “success” in Iraq is that it has allowed us to fight the “terrorists” on the battlefield of our choosing (the so-called flypaper strategy), then why is the US pressuring neighbor states to secure their borders with Iraq? If our intent is to confront the “terrorists” in Baghdad rather than Boston, shouldn’t we want porous Iraqi borders to facilitate the terrorist’s migration into our trap?

Iraqi Elections

Is it just me, or does it seem like for all the talk we’ve heard recently about the elections being the magic potion for peace in Iraq, there hasn’t been much discussion of what those elections actually mean?
No, it’s not just me:

KOPPEL: Despite the positive words from Bush and Allawi, some U.S. officials behind the scenes acknowledge more pessimism that in reality it may be difficult to go ahead with elections as early as January and, if they did, worry whether Iraqis would accept those elections as legitimate — Aaron.
BROWN: Now, the next challenge for you, having tackled this one for us, is to explain the complicated nature of the election itself how they’re — it’s not like they’re going to vote for a president and a vice president and members of Congress. They’re talking about this big block of votes.
KOPPEL: And I can give you a real quick answer. They don’t know yet. I mean a lot of these things have to be — have to be worked out. In fact, they’re thinking people would vote for a party and then the block of parties and then the parties would pick the representatives to go to parliament.
And, it is just — there are so many steps that have as yet to be ironed out. Many people are saying even if security is not an issue, how are they going to lay the groundwork for elections in four months?

So not only do we not know if the elections can be pulled off logistically, we don’t yet even know what Iraqis will be voting for.
But enough of this pessimistic talk. Freedom is on the march, provided Kerry and the terrorists step out of the way.

Out Of Action

I go out of town for half a day and the whole blog falls apart–literally. I inadvertently let my account with the hosting company lapse yesterday. So if you stopped by and didn’t find anything here, that was the reason.
Yesterday afternoon I went to the mountains. Would you believe that in the dozens of trips I’ve made to the Smokies over the years, I have never hiked up Mount Leconte? I went up the Alum Cave Bluff trail. Not the easiest five-mile climb, but I made it without incident. Wow, what a spectacular view! I’ll post some pictures soon.