Bush goes to Baghdad: And all of it makes sense to me

In retrospect, the ruse seems painfully transparent: Bush was going to spend two days discussing Iraq policy. Two days! Policy!

No, the only thing these clowns plan in that sort of detail is a photo op. We’re informed this one took a month of planning. And what a plan it was! Wheels within wheels: oh sure, when Bush started fake yawning at 7:45 and saying he was going to turn in and read. Of course no one was fooled – read! what a kidder! – but they just figured that any second Condi was going to make some similarly lame excuse to absent herself – have to brush my teeth, takes a really long time with the gap, you know! – and then the boys could get on with the traditional game of “Deliverance,” in which Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, who’d been wondering why he’d been invited, is jumped, stripped naked, told he has a purdy mouth, and given a two-minute head start.

So it’s off to the Green Zone for George Bush! In a fleet of helicopters and, despite what CNN may have told you, Bush wore the same flak jacket as these guys, though perhaps without the pee smell Tony Snow detects arising from Dan Barlett’s.


I said perhaps. Funnily enough, there seem to be no pictures of Bush in that get-up.

It was Bush’s first meeting with Nouri Maliki, seen here having an attack of the vapors.


Who, by the way, was the genius who positioned Maliki in front of an American flag?


(Update: Bob of Bob’s Links and Rants has an uncropped version of the picture above this one, which shows that he’s standing in front of an even bigger American flag. Maybe he just likes standing in front of American flags. Maybe he thinks they’re pretty or something.)

It was all going swimmingly, until Bush started speaking. “I appreciate you recognizing the fact that the future of this country is in your hands.” “We discussed the security strategy. We discussed an economic strategy, a reconstruction strategy. And all of it makes sense to me.” “[I]f given the right help, I’m convinced you will succeed, and so will the world.” The world will succeed if given the right help? From where, Rigel 7?

Hey sparky, no one walks in front of the king.
Then he went to speak to the troops. He told them, “I thank you for your sacrifice... Your sacrifice is noble and your sacrifice is important.” How reassuring. Still, being ordered to sit through a pep talk by George Bush is quite a sacrifice.

He told them that he’d given Maliki his patented ophthalmological test: “Today, I have come to not only thank you, but to look Prime Minister Maliki in the eyes -- to determine whether or not he is as dedicated to a free Iraq as you are, and I believe he is.” Yay, he passed the eye test! Just like Putin!

“We don’t expect the Iraqi government to look like the American government.” Except for that one squat, squinty guy. Oh, and their agriculture minister has a purdy mouth, just like Mike Johanns. “We expect an Iraqi government to honor its traditions and its histories and its religious faiths. But we do expect the Iraqi government to honor the right of every man, woman and child to live in a free society.” Dude, it’s one or the other.