In it all the way

George Bush celebrated Greek Independence Day (which is just like American Independence Day, except the alien invaders blow up the Acropolis instead of the White House). The holiday gave Shrub a too-rare chance to talk about ancient Athens, in a bit of his speech I’m guessing he didn’t write himself. Evidently democracy “is a universal concept, started by the Athenians. ... Freedom is not confined to Greece, nor is it confined to America. It is universal in its application, and that’s one of the great lessons of Greek Independence Day.” Reading these things, I always fantasize that I’m in the room, pop up and ask him, for example, if he can tell us what it was that Greece became independent from.

And just before he made out with a Greek Orthodox archbishop, he commented that Greek Independence Day is held on the same day as the Greek Orthodox Feast of the Annunciation, “because they both represent good news.” Is that line as creepy to everyone else as it is to me?



Rumsfeld, about people calling for him to resign: “those kinds of calls have been going on for five-plus years. And the president has asked me not to get involved in politics, and that’s politics.” So the fact that some people recognized your extreme incompetence more than five years ago makes their recognition of that fact less valid in some way?


Rummykins says it would reduce violence if there were an actual Iraqi government, blames lack of one on violence. “Have they [terrorists] delayed it? Probably. They probably have. And is that harmful? Yes.”

Quoting FDR after Pearl Harbor, Rummy says, “we can prevail only if we are in it all the way.” I assume he’s working on defending his failures in Iraq, as many generals did after Vietnam, by claiming that the country never really “fought to win.” The stab-in-the-back theory (Dolchstoß, in the original German). When a reporter asked him a question about the quote, he said, “I think that I was quoting, as I recall, Franklin Roosevelt...” In a time when his competency is being questioned, he’s already unsure of the source of his own quote ten minutes after he’s used it.

Asked about the Pentagon bribing Iraqi newspapers to insert happy-news: “I’m not going to make a judgment off the top of my head.” That’s the difference between Rummy and the rest of us: we knew this was a bad thing within seconds after this was revealed nearly four months ago, but Rummy will not be rushed into forming a thought. He is, and I’m quoting, as I recall, Abraham Lincoln, or possibly Genghis Khan, in it all the way.