A good opportunity to really crush this group of folks

At the Senate hearings today, Condi told Biden, “I have met Prime Minister Maliki. I saw his resolve.”

There are some straight lines even I won’t touch.

Asked whether Bush’s remarks about Iran and Syria yesterday meant we might attack those countries militaries, she said that Bush “isn’t going to rule anything out to protect our troops,” but doesn’t have any immediate plans to do so. Color me reassured.

Speaking of the Decider, this morning he got all choked up and weepy while giving the mother of a dead marine his posthumous Medal of Honor.



Poor sad monkey. Within three hours he was recovered and whooping it up with future dead troops at Fort Benning, playing hide and seek,



eating delicious mashed potatoes or possibly potato salad,



and enjoying the Fort Benning Amateur Theatrical Society’s reenactment of the hanging of Saddam Hussein.



He told the soldiers, “Everywhere that warriors from this base serve, you leave your mark”. Well, mark their territory, if you know what I mean.

He told them, “the sectarian violence needs to be challenged and stopped in order for this young society to advance.” That young society he’s talking about is, oh what’s it called again, Mesopotamia? Babylonia? oh yes, I remember, Iraq.

George’s memory was also troubling him, as he failed to come up with the name Samarra: “They [Al Qaida] bombed holy -- important holy site, they killed innocent people”.

And you know what’s worse? They’re not even really religious: “I, frankly -- well, speaking about religion, these are murderers. They use murder as a tool to achieve their objective. Religious people don’t murder. They may claim they’re religious, but when you kill an innocent woman, or a child to create a political end, that’s not my view of religion.”

Shrub is always willing to generously acknowledge the deep, deep wisdom of others: “One of the wisest comments I’ve heard about this battle in Iraq was made by General John Abizaid -- smart guy, a great soldier. He told me -- he said, Mr. President, if we were to fail in Iraq, the enemy would follow us here to America.”

GeeDubya inspired the troops with his visionary, um, vision of the transformation to come in Iraq: “you’ll begin to see a society that is somewhat more peaceful.”

In a fascinating insight into the workings of his, for the lack of a better word, brain, Bush explained how he crafted the surge policy: “I understand the consequences of failure; they’re not acceptable. And so I thought long and hard how best to succeed. That’s what I’m interested in, is success. The American people are interested in success. And I laid out a plan that is our best chance for success.”

You can really tell how committed Chimpy is to democracy in Iraq by the way he keeps quoting tribal sheiks in Anbar province that have supposedly come over to our side. “They’re tired of foreigners and killers in their midst,” Bush said, without a hint of irony, “That’s what the commanders have told me. And they [I’m not sure if he means the sheiks or the commanders] believe we have a good opportunity to really crush this group of folks.”

A good opportunity to really crush this group of folks. Here’s the link to the transcript again, just in case you want to check that I’m not making that up.

One of the things people are curious about from last night’s speech was his reference to Patriot missiles. Fortunately, today he cleared that up completely: “I also talked about Patriot missile systems in the region, to help others deal with the external threats.”

He also reminded the soldiers of the Big Picture, the larger context:

It’s very important for people to understand -- put this situation in Iraq in a larger context, and that is the ideological war that we’re seeing. I talked to you about the consequences of failure. The best way to defeat the totalitarian of hate is with an ideology of hope -- an ideology of hate -- excuse me -- with an ideology of hope. It matters whether or not people are resentful in the Middle East. It matters if people are hateful and look to strike out at a convenient target in the Middle East. Our security depends on there to be a alternative to the ideology of hate. Because if there’s resentment and hate, it’s easier to recruit 19 kids to get on an airplane and kill 3,000 people.