Surging toward Armegeddon

dr. elsewhere here

Greetings friends, and what a way to start a new year, eh?

Not much to add to Joe's comments, though I confess I did actually watch the whole thing. Only 20 minutes, thankfully. But, FWIW, here are my most salient reactions, however irrelevant, and certainly irreverent.

The real shockers were of course, one, that there was all that sabre rattling toward Iran and Syria. Again. What's additionally horrifying about that one is that 'we' wasted no time in making good that threat. Apparently US troops stormed an Iranian consulate in Iraq this morning, confiscating papers and computers. There have also been reports of explosions in southern Iran (beeta mentioned in comments to Joe). And of course Sy Hersch and Scott Ritter have been insisting this would happen for many months; March is the D-date. It's a done deal (thanks, peteroflonetree); Bush was just announcing he's already on it. In your face, Iraq Study Group! In your face, Congress and the American people! In your face to the whole wide world!

The other big shocker is that the troops are already there, that fleets are being dispatched 'as he speaks,' and that this surge is already underway. So this speech was not to announce a plan for what will be happening, but to announce what is happening. Forget about how brazenly he misrepresented the facts on the oil plans or his distorted reason for public rejection of the war. This was hegemony on display, raw and reckless, with every offered excuse as thin as the gauze of bandages.

And no one in the MSM is paying any attention to the stealth bombers sent this week to South Korea. I find myself waiting for assassinations of Chavez, Morales, and Castro to coincide with the first nuke that gets sent in to Iran. Resembles too much for my taste Michael Corleone's simultaneous mass slaughter of his enemies, but then this whole mafia government seems taken right out of The Godfather series. Except that was really good filmmaking; this administration's fictions don't even achieve B-grade status, and their reality is far far worse.

Nothing legit about any of it. Once again Bush undertakes a highly unConstitutional approach to a highly illegal enterprise. Which leads to my final point for now in all this insanity.
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Did you guys notice how unbelievably nervous Bush was last night? He got a little better as the minutes passed, but not much. He went from looking perfectly petrified to simply dying to get it over with. There was no swagger, no smile, no attempt to charm the audience. It appeared it was all he could to to just read the prompter with something resembling prosodic consistency.

Which got me to thinking, just why was he so nervous now? Of course, there are the plummeting polls (assuming he's made aware of them), and there are all the generals he's had to fire to get what he wants, and there is the increasing threat of real war crimes growing everywhere around him, and there is this annoying Congressional shift that will not rubber stamp his every whim. But he's spent how many weeks now preparing for all these changes? I have to believe he put off the speech until he had everything in place, so he could just get out there and tell the world that he has done what needed to be done, so let's all do a big huddle hug and get on with it. But we didn't get a single heh heh heh.

Bush has demonstrated altogether too frequently in the past that he is more than capable of matchless swagger in the face of his earned consequences and terminal smirks with a big ol' raspberry in the face of reality. Kiss my grits. Which is pretty much what the content of his speech conveyed. But nothing, nothing in his presentation came across that way.

No, there was something arresting and most unsettling about his fear last night. It could be that he is getting some sense that the jig is up, that his circle of friends is getting very very tiny, and that despite all his swagger and smirking and shoulder rubs and nicknames and bravado and grandiose hooplah hell-raising with all those good ol' boys, nobody's buyin' it but Karl and the Big Dick.

That one scene in Paul O'Neill's memoire where Rove is pushing the second tax cut and Bush actually asks, "Didn't we already give them one?" That scene makes me wonder sometimes if there's a soul in there somewhere, if perhaps he sometimes struggles with his puppeteers. Not to give him too much credit; he does ultimately make these heinous decisions. But he has also relied too heavily on Karl and the Big Dick. So why would he be listening to either of them after November? Why would he be relying on anyone he's ever listened to in the past that got him here now?

With even his flocksters peeling away, not to mention the NRA and even many bankers and businessmen, and now Blair's last minute abandonment, plus the undoubtedly huge fight he's had to wage to avoid doing what the ISG (that Congress appointed and Daddy annointed) said needed to be done, well...he's got to be feeling a bit lonely about now.

Still, ya just gotta wonder what it was that got in the way of his being able to rally his smirk and swagger last night, of all nights. Perhaps something like that Sunday-come-to-meetin' chat Billy Graham had with him before he 'quit' drinking?

Maybe God finally did really talk to this sad little man? If so, clearly W didn't hear a word that was said to him. He only got the crap scared out of him, but then went through with it, essentially telling God to kiss his grits.