President Bush this holiday weekend is speaking before groups around
the country flaunting his lack of capacity for math and logic. In
Charleston, W. Va. President Bush is reported by the Toronto Star to have said that America is safer because Saddam Hussein is in a prison cell.
This is either completely false or illogical. The State Dep't. and
the Dep't. of Homeland Defense have indicated in recent weeks that more
attacks upon the U.S. are likely and experts are saying that it is not
a matter of if they will occur, only a matter of when. Now presuming
the President has been advised by the Homeland Defense and State
Departments, the only logical conclusion to draw from the President's
statements is that he is lying to the American people about the being
safer with Hussein in jail.
Had we continued the containment of Iraq, we may have lost as many
as 6 American troops involved in that containment policy, enforcing
no-fly zones, and constraining Iraqi troop movements to central Iraq.
The Presidents invasion has now cost nearly 900 troops lives and there
is no end in sight to American troop losses in Iraq. The President
appears to flaunt his inability to do this simple arithmetic like a
badge of honor! Apparently, he believes American voters will be as
ignorant as he when it comes to adding up America's cost of waging war
in Iraq. Somehow, I doubt that will be the case.
Also, this weekend, AP writer Charles Sheehan reports that V.P. Dick
Cheney was on the campaign trail and said “On issue after issue, the
choice on November 2 is very important. It's a choice between President
Bush's hope and optimism and Senator Kerry's pessimism.” It would
appear that since logic and arithmetic fail the President, optimism is
all that the President has left to run on. But this administration's
optimism stands in stark contrast to the abysmal news coming from the
administration's efforts. Iraqi's lifeline to money, its oil export,
was interrupted again this last week with half of its oil flow cut off
by insurgents. The transfer of Iraqi government to the Iraqi's held out
hope for the President to protect our troops in Iraq by reducing their
profile and letting Iraqi's take up high profile front line positions.
Such optimism however proved hopeless as AP diplomatic writer,
Barry Schweid reports, “The Bush administration is not melting into the
background in Iraq as once promised. Instead, it is keeping its profile
high in Baghdad, driven by a wobbly transition to Iraqi self-rule and a
growing disillusionment among American voters in a presidential
election year.”
Schweid goes on to write
Seasoned Iraq analysts were
not surprised that the administration was raising its profile and its
involvement in the affairs of the now-sovereign Iraq.Geoffrey Kemp, senior White House adviser on the Persian Gulf in
the Nixon administration, said, “My sense is that the administration is
primarily motivated by the domestic situation in the United States.”
It would appear that the administration's optimism is not over
prospects in Iraq, but, stems more from its efforts to campaign
successfully here at home toward a victory at the polls on November 2.
Because the news out of Iraq is not promising of reduced American troop
fatalities or injuries as evidenced by the following stories: Allawi: No Need for Troops from Iraq's Neighbors which reports that neighboring Arab troops in Iraq would only destabilize the security situation, and this story which reports
Moqtada
Sadr, the rebellious Shiite Muslim cleric, insisted Friday that the
U.S.-led occupation of Iraq had not ended with the recent handover of
limited political powers to an interim government, and called on his
followers to continue resisting the large presence of foreign troops in
the country.
Job growth slowed significantly last month from economist's and the
administration's expectations, senior citizens are in uproar over the
Medicare Rx drug card deal which the Administration touted as a
hallmark of its compassionate conservativism and cost the taxpayers
almost 1/3 more than the Administration said it would cost, and there
is no relief in sight for the more than 40 million Americans without
health insurance who will be bankrupted by a medical emergency. The
administration's optimism may make for rounds of applause from party
loyalists, but, among swing and undecided voters in key states, Kerry's
“pessimism” about the state of the union under George W. Bush, appears
primed by facts and news to gain traction with voters in November. It
appears to this writer that logic and math based on facts support
Kerry's pessimism and appear to be absent from the President's
educational experience. [Third Party & Independents:]