Dangerous winds are swirling

Today Bush gave the commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy. Evidently the graduates “learned to brace up, do orderlies, square meals, and eat ‘hamsters’ with your ‘eyes in the boat.’” Those may or may not be euphemisms. Except for the thing about doing orderlies. They totally did orderlies.

Here, by the way, is Bush before he left for the Academy.



Much of the speech was devoted to the claim that the war in Iraq is really all about fighting Al Qaida, including dark intimations about Abu Faraj al-Libi, an Al Qaida guy who they captured two years ago, dumped in Guantanamo and never mentioned publicly before this week but are now claiming proves that Iraq is really all about Al Qaida and that this proves that if we leave Iraq, the enemy will follow us home.

He said, “As we carry out the new strategy, the Iraqi government has a lot of work to do. They must meet its responsibility to the Iraqi people and achieve benchmarks it has set”. Wouldn’t you think that after 6 years as the head of a government, he’d know if government is a “they” or an “it”?

He warned against complaisance about terrorism, cleverly appealing to his audience by using meteorological terms. Coasties are totally into weather. “The danger has not passed. Here in America, we’re living in the eye of a storm. All around us, dangerous winds are swirling, and these winds could reach our shores at any moment.” Insert your own Katrina reference here. And while you’re at it, caption these pictures for me and make me some lunch. I’m feeling cranky and I’m going to go lie down now.