Please don’t be discouraged by the slogans that say America doesn’t like you, because we do

Yesterday, Bush gave brief back to back interviews with three taxpayer-financed propaganda outlets, the Voice of America Persian News Network, Radio Farda (which broadcasts into Iran), and the Pentagon Channel.

Mostly he talked about Iran, and to any Iranians who might be listening. He prophesied, “My message to the young in Iran is that some day your society will be free, and it will be a blessed time for you.” He reassured the Iranian people: “And so my message is, please don’t be discouraged by the slogans that say America doesn’t like you, because we do”. Well, we like you, but we don’t like you like you. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I did, however, detect some sexual tension in his comments about the Iranian government, in whom he pointed out certain traits that he just cannot abide: “It’s just sad that the leadership is in many ways very stubborn”... “they haven’t told the full truth”... “The government has been duplicitous to the world. Very few people trust your government.” It must be awful to be ruled by people like that.

IN OTHER IRONIES WORDS: “In other words, I -- once a nation hasn’t told the truth, it requires a lot of work to convince people that they’ll be telling the truth in the future.”

Speaking of telling the truth, he lied for, I don’t know, the five millionth time, about what Ahmadinejad has said: “such as announcing they want to destroy countries with a nuclear weapon.” Is this an expansion of the usual false claim that Iran has said that it wants nukes? You will also have noticed his avoidance of the name Israel. Similarly, in the Radio Fardo interview he said, “they’ve declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people -- some in the Middle East.” You know, some.

IN OTHER WORDS: “There’s a way forward. In other words, I don’t know what the Iranian people believe about the United States, but they must believe that we have proposed a way forward that will yield to peace.”

In the Pentagon Channel interview, he claimed that wounded soldiers he’s visited usually tell him that they “can’t wait to get back in the battle”, and that family members of members of the military killed in his wars “to a person, nearly” tell him “whatever you do, Mr. President, complete this job.” Like those wounded soldiers, he’s pretty darned brave too: “I’m not afraid to hug a mom or hug a wife or hug a husband and cry.”

IN OTHER WORDS: The Taliban has not been defeated. In other words, they keep coming back”.