BottleOfBlog

Stand Up...But Slowly...Let's See Those Hands...

George W. Bush, September 30, 2004:

Let me first tell you that the best way for Iraq to be safe and secure is for Iraqi citizens to be trained to do the job.

And that's what we're doing. We've got 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of this year, 200,000 by the end of next year…

There are 100,000 troops trained, police, guard, special units, border patrol. There's going to be 125,000 trained by the end of this year. Yes, we're getting the job done.

George W. Bush, November 19, 2005:

As we pursue the terrorists, our military is helping to train Iraqi security forces so they can defend their people, and so they can fight the enemy. And we're making steady progress. With every passing month, more and more Iraqi forces are standing up, and the Iraqi military is gaining new capabilities and new confidence. At the time of our Fallujah operations a year ago, there were only a few Iraqi army battalions in combat. Today there are more than 90 Iraqi army battalions fighting the terrorists, along with our forces. American and Iraqi troops are conducting major assaults to clear out enemy fighters in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq. Iraqi police and security forces are helping clear the terrorists from their strongholds. They're holding onto areas we've cleared and are preventing the enemy from returning.

George W. Bush, January 4, 2006:

First, we're going to work with the Iraqi government to increase the training Iraqi police recruits receive in human rights and the rule of law, so they understand the role of the police in a democratic society.

Second, we're training Iraqi police with a program that has been effective with the Iraqi army. In other words, when we find something that works, we'll do it. And if we find something that's not working, we change -- and that is to embed coalition transition teams inside Iraqi special police units. Embedding our folks inside Iraqi army units has worked. One reason why these Iraqi units are better able to take the lead is because they've worked side-by-side with American specialists and experts, some of our best troops. So we're going to embed these type of soldiers with the Iraqi police forces, as well.

And, today, how are those Iraqi police and security forces doing there, Georgie?  After three years, 2800 dead and 22,000 seriously wounded American soldiers, how are those Iraqis "standing up" so we can stand down?

BAGHDAD -- The signs of the militias are everywhere at the Sholeh police station.

Posters celebrating Moqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi Army militia, dot the building's walls. The police chief sometimes remarks that Shiite militias should wipe out all Sunnis. Visitors to this violent neighborhood in the Iraqi capital whisper that nearly all the police officers have split loyalties.

And then one rainy night this month, the Sholeh police set up an ambush and killed Army Cpl. Kenny F. Stanton Jr., a 20-year-old budding journalist, his unit said. At the time, Stanton and other members of the unit had been trailing a group of Sholeh police escorting known Mahdi Army members.

"How can we expect ordinary Iraqis to trust the police when we don't even trust them not to kill our own men?" asked Capt. Alexander Shaw, head of the police transition team of the 372nd Military Police Battalion, a Washington-based unit charged with overseeing training of all Iraqi police in western Baghdad...

The Iraqi police are not the only ones who feel unsafe. The American soldiers and civilians who train the Iraqis are constantly on guard against the possibility that the police might turn against them. Even in the police headquarters for all of western Baghdad, one of the safest police buildings in the capital, the training team will not remove their body armor or helmets. An armed soldier is assigned to protect each trainer.

"I wouldn't let half of them feed my dog," 1st Lt. Floyd D. Estes Jr., a former head of the police transition team, said of the Iraqi police. "I just don't trust them..."

Sitting in the battalion's war room with four other members of his team, Moore estimated it would take 30 to 40 years before the Iraqi police could function properly, perhaps longer if the militia infiltration and corruption continue to increase. His colleagues nodded.

"It's very, very slow-moving," Estes said.

"No," said Sgt. 1st Class William T. King Jr., another member of the team. "It's moving in reverse."

And that is what George W. Bush has stuck 150,000 Americans in the middle of.  And he thinks John Kerry owes American troops an apology?

What A Jerk

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush joined GOP lawmakers Tuesday in blasting Sen. John Kerry for telling a group of college students they could either work hard in school or "get stuck in Iraq..."

"The senator's suggestion that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting and shameful," Bush said. "The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer armed forces are plenty smart and are serving because they are patriots -- and Senator Kerry owes them an apology."

Oh, for God's sakes.

I have no idea what Kerry meant by his remarks.  And I have no idea how smart our troops are.  And I don't care.  But if you think not studying hard won't land you in Iraq, you might be too dumb to get into the army.  Even under the new recruiting Bush era recruiting guidelines:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Army recruited more than 2,600 soldiers under new lower aptitude standards this year, helping the service beat its goal of 80,000 recruits in the throes of an unpopular war and mounting casualties…

About 17% of the first-time recruits, or about 13,600, were accepted under waivers for various medical, moral or criminal problems, including misdemeanor arrests or drunk driving. That is a slight increase from last year, the Army said.

And how was the Army doing last year?

This year[2005] the Army set a goal of recruiting 80,000 active-duty soldiers, but it wound up with just 73,000—almost 10 percent short. As a result, the Army Times reported this week, the Pentagon has decided to make up the difference by expanding the pool—by letting up to 10 percent of new recruits be young men and women who have neither graduated high school nor earned a General Equivalency Diploma.

More than that, the Los Angeles Times reports today that 4 percent of recruits will be allowed to score as low as in the 16th to 30th percentile—a grouping known as "Category IV"—on the U.S. Armed Forces' mental-aptitude exam…

Several career officers are dismayed by this new policy—not least because it reverses the progress that has been made these past two decades in the buildup of a professional army.

If anyone should be apologizing to the United States Army, it should be Bush for fucking wrecking it in Iraq.  As for the affluent, right wingers with college bound kids, how do they feel about Senator Kerry's remarks?

Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents.

t was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt.

"I want you to know we support you," she gushed.

Rivera soon reached the limits of her support.

"Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told him.

Outraged, I'm sure.

The Dumb Dumbing The Dumber

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A quarter century after the Reagan revolution and a dozen years after Republicans vaulted into control of Congress, a new CNN poll finds most Americans still agree with the bedrock conservative premise that, as the Gipper put it, "government is not the answer to our problems -- government is the problem."

Yes, government is often "the problem".  At least, when Reagan Revolution Republicans run it, anyway.

Your government is not "the problem".  Your government is you.  Which, frankly, tells you more about the Sainted Ronald Reagan than your "liberal media", which sainted him, ever did.

Your federal government was not "the problem" and has hardly ever been "the problem" since its conception until January of 1981, when it proceeded to spend ungodly amounts of your money without actually paying for it.  And your federal government did that for 12 years, until Bill Clinton not only paid for what he spent, but started paying down the national debt to the tune of two hundred and thirty billion dollars a year.

And then another Reagan Revolution Republican came into office and turned that 230 billion dollar a year surplus into a trillion and half dollars worth of debt.

Thereby, somehow, convincing Americans that Reagan was right--government is the problem!

The poll released Friday also showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans perceive, correctly, that the size and cost of government have gone up in the past four years, when Republicans have had a grip on the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House.

Right.  And it's all true.  But why don't Americans get the next part?  That modern Republican government is the problem?

Discretionary spending grew from $649 billion in fiscal year 2001 to $968 billion in fiscal year 2005, an increase of $319 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Queried about their views on the role of government, 54 percent of the 1,013 adults polled said they thought it was trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Only 37 percent said they thought the government should do more to solve the country's problems.

Depressingly hilarious, isn't it?  In the last six years, when the federal government has done the least for average Americans since the Great Depression, while spending just about the most in the history of the world, Americans have somehow been convinced that the federal government is trying to do too much to solve the country's problems.

Americans had a slightly different perspective when it came to the specific issue of promoting traditional values. A slight majority -- 51 percent -- said they thought that was an appropriate activity for government, while 43 percent said it should not favor any particular set of values.

Even worse.

Take out a copy of the Constitution.  Read it.  It won't take long.  It's only about a dozen pages long--amendments and all.  And find the part--in any of the articles or the amendments--that has to do with promoting values.  Find the part that even defines values.

You can get back to me on that in about a thousand years, because it's not there.  At all.  In fact, about the closest the Constitution, which created and empowered our federal government, comes to even mentioning values is the First Amendment, which specifically states values have no place in the federal government.

It's right there.  And not there.  In black and white.  In our Constitution.  Which anyone can read.

On the toilet, it would take that long.

And, yet, fifty one percent of Americans have no idea what the federal government was created to do, what it was empowered to do, and what it's supposed to do.

I have no idea why that is.  And I have no idea why so many Americans have lost faith in their government, which is, in theory and proper practice, the greatest government in the history of the world.

Personally, I think its because, since the Reagan Revolution, a bunch of people who hate democracy have been running our democracy with the intent of proving it doesn't work.  And they've run it as bad as it could be run and then, after fucking the federal government up, said, "See?  We told you this couldn't work!"

Your federal government addresses the concerns of 300 million people across an entire continent.  When run by people who are competent and who believe in democracy, it, with all it's problems, does an amazingly good job.

It's incredible that Americans don't know that.

It's shocking that fifty one percent of Americans think that private enterprise can do some things better and cheaper than the federal government--particularly in light of the fact that the disasterous Iraq War, which has been contracted out to private industry more than any war in American history and is proving to be the most expensive war American history.

Whatever.  Mission Accomplished!  This is the final satisfactory result of the "Reagan Revolution", when the American people are finally, for the first time in a century, convinced that problem is that they actually have too much say in the way the gubment is run.

That the nation would be much better off if they, The People, had much less say in the important matters of running our great nation.

More than half of Americans amazingly say that. 

Your "liberal" media wonders why.

And the new American aristocracy--the modern Republican Party--celebrates sixty years of rolling back the power of The People.

Jesus Can Change Your Heart...

...but even He can't miracle you unstupid.

You know, when I campaigned here in 2000, I said, I want to be a war President. No President wants to be a war President, but I am one.

Someone, other than Jesus, needs to stop the Preznit from "clearing brush" on Air Force One.

Winning! What Could Be Worse?

There was an almost forgettable exchange earlier this month in the Iraqi National Assembly, itself on the fringe of relevance in today's disintegrating Iraq. Lawmakers debated whether legislation should be submitted to a committee to determine if it was compatible with Islam. Ideas were put forth, as well as criticism. Why not a committee to determine whether legislation endorses democratic principles? one asked. In stepped Mahmoud Mashadani, the assembly's speaker, to settle the dispute.

"Any law or decision that goes against Islam, we'll put it under the kundara!" he thundered.

"God is greatest!" lawmakers shouted back, in a rare moment of agreement between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Kundara means shoe, and the bit of bluster by Mashadani said a lot about Baghdad today.

That's your Freedom Agenda on the march.  That's your five hundred billion dollars spent on defeating "Islamofascism".

A government, a theocracy, run by strict adherence to the Koran.

Hey, it happens in the Mid-east.  Like in Iran.

But very rarely do Americans get the pleasure of bleeding and paying for it.

Stupid Americans Once Again Can't Unnerstan'

Republicans go crazy for their Flip Flopper In Chief!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In an about-face, the Bush administration announced this week it is tossing out its rallying cry for the Iraq war.

Repeatedly since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, President Bush has said the U.S. will "stay the course" in the war-torn nation.

As recently as August, during a speech in Utah, Bush said, "If we leave the streets of Baghdad before the job is done, we will have to face the terrorists in our own cities. We will stay the course, we will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed and victory in Iraq will be a major ideological triumph in the struggle of the 21st century.

Wow!  What a flip flop! But it's worse than that!

STEPHANOPOULOS: James Baker says that he’s looking for something between “cut and run” and “stay the course.”

BUSH: Well, hey, listen, we’ve never been “stay the course,” George.

Never?  Ever?

BUSH: We will stay the course. [8/30/06]

BUSH: We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. [8/4/05]

BUSH: We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We’re just going to stay the course. [12/15/03]

BUSH: And my message today to those in Iraq is: We’ll stay the course. [4/13/04]

BUSH: And that’s why we’re going to stay the course in Iraq. And that’s why when we say something in Iraq, we’re going to do it. [4/16/04]

BUSH: And so we’ve got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course. [4/5/04]

Hell, Bush has not only tossed out the "stay the course" thing, but he's tossed out the "we've never been stay the course" on top of it!  That's a lot of tossing.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — The White House said Monday that President Bush was no longer using the phrase “stay the course” when speaking about the Iraq war, in a new effort to emphasize flexibility in the face of some of the bloodiest violence there since the 2003 invasion.

“He stopped using it,” said Tony Snow, the White House press secretary.

Yes, he's quite a tosser.

And, if you're English, you'll know exactly what I mean by that.

Whatever.  That's fine and good.  People are making too much out of it.  After all, it's not that much different from how Gubner Bush answered questions about his cocaine snorting in 2000--he's stopped using it.  So, that's pretty much the same as if he never used it at all.

And, also, he never, likewise, washed all that cocaine down with bourbon.

So that's that.

From Mr. "You know who I am--I say what I mean and I mean what I say" Bush.

He says what he means.  He means what he says.

Though, every now and then, Tony Snow might have to tell you that Bush has stopped saying what he means and, therefore, never really meant what he said.

Or, even said it all.

Or, he said it, and he meant it, but he didn't mean it the way he said it.

Or, he meant it exactly like he said it, but it wasn't clear what he was saying.

Or meaning.

Or, he said it like he meant it, but he meant something totally different from our common understanding of the meaning of his words.

Or, he stopped saying it.

So, fuck off.

If only our primative minds weren't so susceptable to the influence of dastardly John Kerry's nuanced world views, we'd understand that Bush was against staying the course before he was for staying the couse.

Ya think there's still something in the ketchup?

Rotten To The Core

DETROIT -(Dow Jones)- The heads of Detroit's Big Three auto makers have scheduled a date to meet with President Bush next month, Karl Rove, senior advisor to the president, said Tuesday. The meeting follows a series of failed efforts undertaken this year for the three parties this year.

Rove, speaking in an interview with Detroit radio station WJR, said the White House often talks to "the auto boys" and that Bush relates to the problems of the Big Three - General Motors Corp. (GM), Ford Motor Co. (F) and DaimlerChrysler AG's (DCX) Chrysler Group.

Har!

I bet Bush does relate to the problems of the Big Three!  After all, as a bidnessman, Bush never ran a company he didn't bankrupt.  Christ, Bush took a two hundred and thirty billion dollar gubment surplus and, amazingly turned it into a trillion dollars of new debt.  And that's without counting the Iraq fiasco.

So, when he hears General Motors or Ford just posted record setting, mindboggling billion dollar losses, I'm pretty sure Bush does say, "I can relate to that."

But, if the Big Three are looking to the Disaster Monkey for help...well, the American highways are going to be bumper to bumper with Toyotas for the rest of our lives.

"We need to find a way to help moderate the very dramatic increase in health- care costs," Rove said...

"We need to have tax policies and litigation policies," Rove said, suggesting there are ways for the government to help auto makers cut costs, which have been largely responsible for each of the Big Three devising restructuring or recovery plans over the past year.

What a bunch of bullshit.

First of all, why is Karl Rove even talking about this?  Why is anyone even writing down what Karl Rove has to say about this?  Karl Rove doesn't even have a college degree.  Karl Rove has never worked for a business a single day of his life.  And Karl Rove has never generated a single penny of wealth through industry in his long, ugly life.

Since he was old enough to dodge service in Vietnam--a war he wanted to win, but refused to fight in--Karl Rove hasn't done a goddammed thing except jackoff furiously at the idea of ratfucking his political opponents or people who cross him.

But suddenly he's someone anyone should listen to about American manufacturing?

And, secondly, cutting costs have not largely been responsible for the problems of the Big Three--unless you count their insanely excessive compensation packages for their management teams.  The same management teams that have taken the Big Three from kicking Japan's ass in the '90s to posting billion dollar losses in the early 2000s.

It's not costs.  It's not healthcare, or taxes, or unions, or litigation, or any of that other crap.

What's largely responsible for the financial troubles of the Big Three is that, aside from their crapass grossly overpaid management teams, as car makers, in the bidness of buiding cars, they build pretty boring, crappy cars. 

They build them too big, they build them for too long, and very nearly every automotive innovation comes from overseas.

Christ, the Big Three are hardly making cars in America, anyway.  You know who does build cars in America?  Toyota.  Hell, they're building new automotive plants in America, using American labor, paying healthcare costs, toiling under our repressive tax system and still gaining market share.

What's GM doing?  They're busting out Delphi, shipping thousands of American jobs to China, and building cars in Canada.  Why Canada?  Because Canada has a national healthcare system, the kind that the Big Three and guys like Karl Rove and George Bush spent a fortune on insuring Americans would never, ever have.

That's right.  The Big Three can't pay the healthcare costs of Americans that Toyota can pay, so they export our jobs to Canada to take advantage of a healthcare system that they defeated in America.

Again, it isn't healthcare, or unions, or litigation.  It's craptacular CEO's making far too much money and working far too many hours.  It's building boring cars for far too many years to suck each and every last penny out of them.  It's the short view, for the quick buck.

Which is fine.  If you want to run a bidness that way.  But, when you run it that way, the people who should suck it up are the people who ran it into the ground.

But this shit?  Tort reform?  Cutting health care for workers?  More tax breaks for huge corporations?

That's just taking a catastrophe for American workers--Americans who aren't in any way responsible for the disasterous consequences of the historic greed of the new American aristocracy--then, punishing them to advance an agenda the aristocrats wanted to push no matter what.

Can't these people ever do the right thing?

President Squad: Part Deux!

I meant to make fun of this last week.  But I forgot.  But then I remembered.  So I'm making fun of it now.

Mr. Bush reaffirmed his determination today at a fund-raising event for Representative Dan Sherwood of Pennsylvania. “Our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging,” Mr. Bush said in La Plume, in northeastern Pennsylvania. “Our goal is victory. What is changing are the tactics we use to pursue that goal and defeat our enemies.”

To withdraw from Iraq, as some Democrats want, would be “fulfilling Osama bin Laden’s highest aspirations,” Mr. Bush said. He was expected to take a similar tack later at a fund-raiser for Senator George Allen of Virginia in Richmond.

Gee, and I thought bin Laden's highest aspirations were: one, get the American troops out of Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden's anger with the United States stems from the 1990 decision by Saudi Arabia to allow the U.S. to stage attacks on Iraqi forces in Kuwait and Iraq. After the U.S. victory, the U.S. military presence became permanent.

In a CNN interview with bin Laden in 1997, he said the ongoing U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia is an "occupation of the land of the holy places."

In 1996, bin Laden issued a "fatwah," a religious ruling urging Muslims to kill U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and Somalia. A second fatwah in 1998 called for attacks on American civilians.

Which George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld very helpfully did.

The United States has said that virtually all its troops, except some training personnel, are to be pulled out of Saudi Arabia.

The decision was confirmed by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a joint news conference with Saudi Defence Minister Prince Sultan.

And, two, overthrow the secular, socialist Saddam Hussein who was sitting on an ocean of oil.

Which George Bush also very helpfully did.

Unless George plans to next topple the House of Saud, there ain't much more Bush could do to fulfill bin Laden's highest aspirations.

But the funniest thing about this article is not that.  Nor is it Tony Snow's Vietnam comparison.  The funniest thing about it is that George Bush made this ridiculously stupid statement at a fundraiser for Dan Sherwood during National Character Counts Week.

And who is Dan Sherwood?

Nineteen days before the midterm elections, President Bush flew here to champion the reelection of a congressman who last year settled a $5.5 million lawsuit alleging that he beat his mistress during a five-year affair.

"I'm pleased to be here with Don Sherwood," a smiling president told the congressman's loyal but dispirited supporters at a luncheon fundraiser Thursday. "He has got a record of accomplishment."

Quite a record. While representing the good people of the 10th District, the married congressman shacked up in Washington with a Peruvian immigrant more than three decades his junior. During one assignation in 2004, the woman, who says Sherwood was striking her and trying to strangle her, locked herself in a bathroom and called 911; Sherwood told police he was giving her a back rub.

At a time when Republicans are struggling to motivate religious conservatives to go to the polls next month, it is not clear what benefit the White House found in sending Bush to stump for Sherwood -- smack dab in the middle of what Bush, in an official proclamation, dubbed "National Character Counts Week."

Good God.  Can these clowns do anything right?

It's like having Leslie Nielsen for our President.

Once Again...

Rangers lead the way:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is.  Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them.  Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet.  It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground…

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people.  So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity.  Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Mr. and Mrs. Tillman did something right.  And their boys were far too good to be sent into combat by a guy like George W. Bush.

Empty, Ugly, And Stupid

Moscow Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized shrinking Russian press freedoms, questioned the enforcement of a restrictive new law on foreign private groups here and called for eased tensions between Russia and neighboring Georgia when she arrived here Saturday to discuss the North Korean nuclear crisis with Kremlin officials…

Earlier, Rice said that the future of a free Russian press and electronic media "is a major concern" of the United States government.
 
"There is still an independent print press," she said. "Unfortunately, there is not much left of independent television in Russia."

Yes, it is a major concern when a supposedly democratic form of government actively suppresses the free press.  It is very disconcerting when a democratic government actively forbids the free press from informing The People what the Facts really are.

When a government actively interferes with the free access of information to The People, that government is rotten, through and through.

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 20 — The United Nations office in Baghdad says that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has ordered the country’s medical authorities to stop providing the organization with monthly figures on the number of civilians killed and wounded in the conflict there, according to a confidential cable…

The cable, dated Oct. 17 and sent to United Nations officials in New York and Geneva by Ashraf Qazi, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, says the prohibition may hinder the ability of his office to give accurate accounts in its bimonthly human rights reports on the levels of violence and the effect on Iraqi society…

Mr. Qazi, a former Pakistani diplomat, says that the order to let the prime minister’s office take over the release of the numbers came down a day after a United Nations report for July and August showed a serious upward spike in the number of dead and wounded. The leader of the Health Ministry in Iraq appealed to be allowed to continue supplying the figures to the United Nations but was turned down according to a subsequent letter from the prime minister’s office, Mr. Qazi’s cable said.

Gee, where to you think the American propped up Maliki got the idea to shut down bad news from?

Pathetic.  This is the thing all the crazy, foul mouthed, unhinged Bush-bashing critics have been rationally, civilly, and sanely pointing out for years:

You can't launch an unprovoked pre-emptive war and then talk about peace.  You can't manipulate the press or establish "First Amendment Zones" and talk about the freedom of the press.  You can't throw out the Geneva Conventions and then talk about torture.  You can't dismiss exit polls and then talk about election fraud.

You can't govern by "the ends justify the means" and then try to use "moral authority" to influence other governments.

You can't cite the rules of the game if you, yourself, were the ones who threw out the rulebook.