GWOT News

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I’m almost sorry I missed it:

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing. Except it’s part of — and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

(Singing):

    Oh whats Iraq got to do, got to do with it
    What`s Iraq but a second hand scapegoat
    What`s Iraq got to do, got to do with it
    Who needs a brain
    When you’ve got the Marines …

More of today’s hiccups from the Commander in Chief, via Joe Aravosis:

President Bush said Monday the United States would lose “our soul as a nation” if it gave up on the Iraq war now, warning it would be a “disaster” if U.S. troops left before the new Iraqi government can control the country.

“We’re not leaving so long as I’m president,” an animated Bush said in a wide-ranging White House press conference. “That would be a huge mistake.” He conceded, though, that the war was “straining the psyche of our country” with U.S. deaths now standing at more than 2,600.

I’d say it’s straining a lot more than our psyche.

In other news, a judge in Miami dismissed the lead terror charge against Jose Padilla:

A federal judge in Miami on Monday dismissed the lead terror count against Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen once identified as a “dirty bomb” suspect and detained as an “enemy combatant.”

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke said in a written opinion that the charge — conspiracy to “murder, kidnap and main persons in a foreign country” — duplicated other counts in an federal grand jury indictment handed down last year.

“An indictment is multiplicitous when it charges a single offense multiple times, in separate counts,” Cooke wrote. As charged, she added, the indictment exposes Padilla and his codefendants to multiple punishments for a single crime.

The indictment, Cooke noted, “alleges one and only one conspiracy” and that the same facts are “realleged in each of the consecutive counts.”

Cooke also ruled that the second count against Padilla and his co-defendants was “duplicitous” — charging them with the same offense under two sections of federal law. She ordered the government to choose one of the two counts, which provide for different penalties, by Friday.

Padilla still faces charges of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, and providing material support to terrorists.

11 thoughts on “GWOT News”

  4. You got that right,Bonnie.

    Bush is an absolute joke. I think the walls are closing in on him. The courts have declared that Bush is a criminal, and even if nobody wants to speak the words and call him what he is, his deeds have spoken for him. I guess we’ll just have smoke him out of the White House.

    Oh, almost forgot!… I think the kidnapping and torture are straining the nation’s psyche also.

  5. I think Dubya meant to say that the war “is straining the nation’s psycho,” because he looks to be under a lot of strain these days.

  7. Right on Bonnie.
    I think the rhetorical strategy of saying “we never said Saddam ordered the 9/11 attacks” keeps the link alive by painting a scenario for the listener and then inviting the listener to imagine every OTHER scenario except the most extreme one he’s debunking (“Osama? Saddam here. How’s it going? We’ve set a date and I want to run it by you . . .”). Also, Bush’s stumble (“Iraq was a – Iraq – the lesson of September 11 . . .”) kept the link alive in its own verbally mashed up way. But maybe I’m reading too much into it. The one positive I read in that exchange was that the reporter pressed him on the link instead of letting it implicitly stand.

  9. Donna – thanks for pointing me/us to that. I found myself nodding along. I think he nails it.
    I really appreciated the article following the Bush/narcissist one where Cole compares the 24/7 news coverage of Jon Benet with the meager coverage of the 14 year old Iraqi girl raped by U.S. troops – and he calls out the obvious racism behind our collective sympathy for the blond white girl & our collective ignoring of the Iraqi Other.

  10. Pingback: The Mahablog » The Mission Creep

  11. “We’re not leaving so long as I’m president,”

    He’ll never admit to his failure. I guess the next guy is going to have to wear the disgrace of Iraq.

    Where can I make a contribution to the George W.Bush Presidential Library? Does he take paypal?

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