Things that go bump on the right

By Ed Naha
Created Oct 31 2006 - 12:36pm

Halloween is here, that spooky holiday wherein innocent children don ghastly
masks and pretend they're monsters.

Unfortunately, in America, every day has been the Bizarro version of
Halloween since '01, with true monsters donning compassionate conservative
masks, smiling at and soothing us, while wreaking more havoc than
Frankenstein's monster could ever dream of.

Witness the performance of D.C.'s Unholy Trinity, this past week. Bush,
Cheney and Rumsfeld snarled, smirked and bellowed like night-stalking
beasts, fending off reality like a vampire does garlic.

Anyone who saw Rumsfeld's performance last week is, probably, still in awe.
His brilliant combination of Yosemite Sam and the psychotic pig farmer from
"Motel Hell" deserves some kind of award. Clutching the podium at a press
conference and sneering at reporters, he ordered them to "just back off"
their Iraqi FUBAR criticism and "relax," explaining that "This is
complicated stuff."

Rummy was in full fang mode because, the day before, hot on the heels of
Bush banishing the terms "stay the course," "time-tables," and, presumably,
"cut and run" (replacing them with "shifting our tactics" and "constant
readjustment," "the Iraqis meeting benchmarks" and "severing and
sauntering"), Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki smacked-down the U.S.,
stating: "I affirm that this government represents the will of the people
and no one has the right to impose a timetable on it."

Then he said the new Bush plan was prompted by American electoral politics:
"I am sure that this is not the official policy of the U.S. government, but
it is a result of the election race going on and we are not much concerned
with it."

Ignoring the real world as usual, Rumsfeld attacked the press for playing up
the U.S.-Iraqi dust-up: " Well, it's a political season, and everyone's
trying to make a little mischief out of this and make -- turn it into a
political football and see if we can't get it on the front page of every
newspaper and find a little daylight between what the Iraqis say or someone
in the United States says or somebody else in the United States says.

"And I mean, it is not complicated. I've explained it two or three times.
The president did an excellent job of explaining it yesterday. "

In terms of these new "benchmarks," the Iraqis are supposed to "meet?" Rummy
declared: "Now, you're looking for some sort of a guillotine to come flowing
down if some date isn't met. That is not what this is about. This is
complicated stuff. It's difficult. We're looking out into the future. No one
can predict the future with absolute certainty."

Hey, Nostradamus? At breakfast time? You all have proven you can't predict
lunch.

Not being able to resist only one foot in his mouth, Rumsfeld expounded upon
the "benchmarks" in a rant that made Dennis Hopper seem like a statesman,
circa "Easy Rider."

"And I wouldn't waste a lot of newsprint trying to find daylight between
everybody on this, or try to find things that are wrong with it. I think --
the idea of saying, 'We're here, we want to get there, here are some steps
to get there. Let's go ahead and tell the world that we think those are the
steps we want to get there, we've kind of agreed on them,' and then see if
we can't do it. And then, of course, you can point with alarm and say, 'Oh
my goodness, you didn't make it.' And you can have a front-page article and
everyone will have a good time. And we'll say, 'That's right, you didn't
make it.' And then the ones that we make earlier than we thought, we'll
never see it on the front page."

He later called questions "imperfect" and "dead wrong" and referred to the
news from the front thusly: "I find almost every day I see all kinds of
mythology repeated in the press day after day of things that never happened,
just unbelievable what I see."

In terms of whom exactly we're fighting, he proffered: "You've heard General
Casey comment that -- you say, 'Well, who's the enemy?' And the answer is
the enemy is different in different parts of the country. There's more than
one enemy. There are different elements to the insurgency and to the al
Qaeda activities. And there are common criminals who are hired by various
elements there to go out and put out IEDs and do various other things."

Note that he left out gnomes and trolls. Phew!

He later declared he hadn't just fallen off a turnip truck and stated, in
terms of a question, "The problem is the word 'it.'"

This is Dracula's Renfield grown-up. The press conference ended, tellingly,
via the official DOD transcript.

Q: "Are the people of Baghdad safer than they were six months ago?"

(No audible response.)

Q: "Thank you."

Rummy then left and had a shot of spiders and flies.

Not to be outdone by Addled Gramps, the Lord High Minister of All That Is
Sinister, Biggus Dickus Cheney agreed with a radio host that a "dunk in
water is a no-brainer if it can save lives."

Cheney replied that "It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was
criticized as being the vice president 'for torture.' We don't torture."

I guess Cheney has never listened to one of his speeches.

Cheney and everybody in the White House denied Big Dick was talking about
water boarding. Okay, either Cheney was having a Salem flashback or he was
getting confused about dunking prisoners in water or dunking terrorist
doughnuts in coffee. Unfortunately, he didn't clarify the point to his wife,
Lynne (girl on girl novelist), who, while promoting her new children's book,
tore CNN's Wolf Blitzer a new one when he brought the subject up, accusing
him of "running terrorist propaganda" on the CNN Bush Chapstick station.

And, just when you thought the Cheney clan could sink no lower, Dick managed
to bring it all home, yesterday, blaming the rise in violence in Iraq this
past month on the American mid-term elections. The terrorists, you see, want
the Democrats to win.

There will be a slight pause, right now, to gather up your brain cells. (Try
a teaspoon.)

Of the three, Bush is the most pathetic, spouting and flailing about
anything that pops into what barely passes as a mind.

Hop, skipping and jumping around the states at the tax-payers' expense,
condemning gay marriage, condemning Democrats (gonna raise your taxes and
let your father marry you or the family dawg) and getting into a real Linda
Blair "Exorcist" vibe, our hapless hero-in-chief has been trying to re-frame
our Iraq fiasco in sunny terms.

"Absolutely, we're winning," Bush said, last week, at a "press" conference.
"As a matter of fact, my view is the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave
before the job is done."

To conservative commentators in a private meeting, he declared: "Abizaid,
who I think is one of the really great thinkers, John Abizaid -- I don't
know if you've ever had a chance to talk to him, he's a smart guy -- he came
up with this construct: If we leave, they will follow us here. (NOTE: OY!
This is the military version of the old children's song "The Teddy Bears'
Picnic.") That's really different from other wars we've been in. If we
leave, okay, so they suffer in other parts of the world, used to be the old
mantra. This one is different. This war is, if they leave, they're coming
after us. As a matter of fact, they'll be more emboldened to come after us.
They will be able to find more recruits to come after us.

"Abizaid clearly sees this struggle -- he sees the effects of victory in
Iraq as having a major impact on other parts of the Middle East. He also
sees the reciprocal of that, a defeat -- just leaving -- the only defeat is
leaving, is letting things fall into chaos and letting al Qaeda have a safe
haven."

As for "stay the course"? Said Bush: "This stuff about 'stay the course' --
stay the course means, we're going to win. Stay the course does not mean
that we're not going to constantly change."

Okay: so, if we stay we win. If we leave, we lose. Pretty complicated stuff.

Can you say "Tar Baby?"

Bush's flat-out saying that we're "winning" in Iraq brought this response
from CNN's Michael Ware, who's stationed in Iraq. "I mean I would very much
like to ask President Bush how he defines winning, because on the ground
here, it looks like anything but.

"Given the state of chaos, given the near civil war, given the rising tempo
of the Sunni insurgency, given the increasing influence, as Ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad pointed out, of Iran and, to a lesser degree, Syria, I
would like to know how the president defines victory.

"So far in this war, what we have seen with the way things have developed is
that two of America's greatest enemies are the only beneficiaries of this
conflict -- al Qaeda, which 16 U.S. intelligence agencies say has become
stronger, not weaker, as a result of this war. So the very thing the
president says he came here to prevent, he has fostered."

When, surrounded by conservative pundits and asked for some good news, he
said "You're talking to Noah about the flood," later adding "I'm interested
in one thing: I'm interested in winning."

Can you say: "schizoid?"

Getting into the politics of the war, at his press conference, Bush opined:
"We must not fall prey to the sophisticated propaganda by the enemy, who is
trying to undermine our confidence and make us believe that our presence in
Iraq is the cause of all its problems."

Reality isn't propaganda, Junior. Reality is reality.

"If I did not think our mission in Iraq was vital to America's security, I'd
bring our troops home tomorrow."

The operative word is "think."

He also had the balls to say: "As General Casey reported yesterday in Iraq,
'the men and women of the Armed Forces... have never lost a battle in over
three years in the war.'"

Maybe because the war is one colossal, neverending FUBAR battle?

The best question asked at the sub-event came from NBC's David Gregory: "Mr.
President, for several years you have been saying that America will stay the
course in Iraq; you were committed to the policy. And now you say that, no,
you're not saying, stay the course, that you're adapting to win, that you're
showing flexibility. And as you mentioned, out of Baghdad we're now hearing
about benchmarks and timetables from the Iraqi government, as relayed by
American officials, to stop the sectarian violence.

"In the past, Democrats and other critics of the war who talked about
benchmarks and timetables were labeled as defeatists, defeat-o-crats, or
people who wanted to cut and run. So why shouldn't the American people
conclude that this is nothing from you other than semantic, rhetorical games
and all politics two weeks before an election?"

Bush launched into a non-answer, ending with: "That is substantially
different, David, from people saying, we want a time certain to get out of
Iraq. As a matter of fact, the benchmarks will make it more likely we win.
Withdrawing on an artificial timetable means we lose."

Remember the poem "Jabberwocky?"

Bush then attacked Democrats, skirted the topic of permanent U.S.
installations in Iraq and, fingers-crossed, blurted: "It's interesting, here
in America, I ran into a kid the other day who used to work here and he goes
to a famous law school, and he said, the problem, Mr. President, is people
don't believe we're at war."

The kid's name was Straw Man.

But Bush wasn't done, yet, in terms of his offensive Iraq offensive.

Just, yesterday, on the stump (as many of our Iraq vets are now walking
upon), he accused Democrats of not having a plan for Iraq.

"The Democratic goal is to get out of Iraq. The Republican goal is to win in
Iraq," Bush told a rally in a gymnasium at Georgia Southern University.

"If you listen carefully for a Democrat plan for success, they don't have
one. Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, yet they don't have a
plan for victory," he said.

Presidential mask in place, the ghoul then announced to the audience "Boo!"

Just kidding. He'd never ever do anything that honest.

As Bush was speaking, the 101st American trooper died in Iraq this month:
small arms fire. That translates to: a sniper's bullet to the head.

And Bush is spouting off about a plan for victory.

What's his?

Stay there until everyone's dead?

After Halloween, when the phony monsters go home and eat their candy, we'll
still have the real monsters nesting in D.C..

Boo!
_______

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson