Thursday, December 15, 2005
LOOKING OUT FROM INSIDE THE CARAPACE - THE WHEELS ARE OFF THE PACE CAR
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Breakfast with Bwana
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DECEMBER 15, 2005
LOOKING OUT FROM INSIDE THE CARAPACE
THE WHEELS ARE OFF THE PACE CAR:
My Republican friends – yes, I have many who are both, friends and Republicans – accuse me of getting perverse pleasure from picking on the President. Funny thing is, my Democrat friends used to say the same thing when Clinton was President! I can protest until I’m blue in the face that for the satirist in me, fair game is fair game and there’s nothing fair about it. It’s just the fare for my game. They don’t get it.
Actually, in this case, I am more interested in the prospect that the President seems to be realizing that, after all is said and done, God had nothing to do with his becoming President and, most likely, she did not and does not really care.
But, it’s hard to realize such things when one’s cocoon is also one’s carapace. Even the series of recent rah-rah speeches have been delivered in another kind of carapace … one military academy to another … one fort, another base … an aircraft carrier deck … occasionally, a right wing yahoo stronghold. One should not be surprised at enthusiastic applause when the Commander-in-Chief speaks at military gatherings. I mean, if I worked at a company and the CEO came in and said something idiotic, I’d applaud anyway. Why, if I had worked at GE and they showed a video of Jack Welch and Susie Leftover (or whatever her name is) in the GE Imaging Studies boardroom, I’d have applauded that too. Jeff Immelt must have applauded a lot to win out over the guys now running Home Despot and a host of other companies.
Permit me a minor digression. For my Republican friends who have been misled by the title of this piece into thinking that “carapace” has something to do with NASCAR, please get a Funk & Wagnalls. Say it fast: “Funk’nWagnalls” and you’ll get the idea. Say it fast enough, and the wheels come off. Say it soft, and it’s almost like racing. The NASCAR thing … another carapace of sorts … is a pace car.
So, anyway, Prez has been doing his speech-making routine – you know, make basically the same speech six times. Whatever happened to the old adage that if you repeat something three times, people will believe it? Well, let’s give him credit for trying. He’s up to six times and although it hasn’t worked, he is an enthusiastic sort, isn’t he? Some of the bravado and braggadocio are gone, but the there seems to be a new realism setting in.
Yesterday’s speech was outside the usual carapace, but only slightly. Three fourths of the cocoon – Rummy, Condi and Chertoff – were present. CHEstpaiNEY, trying to catch his breath, was in an undisclosed location and still SOB (short of breath). The White House Press Release notes that the speech was delivered at the The Woodrow Wilson Center, in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. Undoubtedly, history will record that it was given from the Donald Rumsfeld Lectern, spoken into the Condoleeza Rice Microphone, and read from the Michael Chertoff Teleprompter.
The President’s strangulating grip on his own self-righteously evident truth is slowly devolving into a soft grasp on reality. But, you have to be alert to catch the subtle loss of his pet squeeze. First, he said: “In the war on terror, Iraq is now the central front -- and over the last few weeks, I've been discussing our political, economic, and military strategy for victory in that country.”
Notice the Bushian slip (yes, it’s related to the “Freudian” slip, but since born-again Methodists don’t have dirty thoughts except about bombing the hell out of the enemy, a new term is in order) that Iraq is “now” the central front. Never mind that a front is a front and not a center. I’ll take “central front” to mean the “center of the front.” I’ll also take “now” to mean “not then.” It is heartening though that, at long last, we have a political, economic, and military strategy for victory.
Keep in mind though that people in carapaces often have convincing conversations with themselves.
Next the President said: “September the 11th also changed the way I viewed threats like Saddam Hussein. We saw the destruction terrorists could cause with airplanes loaded with jet fuel -- and we imagined the destruction they could cause with even more powerful weapons. At the time, the leaders of both political parties recognized this new reality: We cannot allow the world's most dangerous men to get their hands on the world's most dangerous weapons. In an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.
We removed Saddam Hussein from power because he was a threat to our security.”
This is the first Bushian slip admitting that September 11 caused some change in his thinking about Saddam Hussein. Although we know of the reports that within days of that fateful attack, the President was asking if Hussein could be linked to 9-11, the Administration has steadfastly denied that they sought to manufacture a linkage between the Iraq of then and Al-Qaeda.
Well, now we have direct evidence of backwards reasoning. But then, think about it this way, Saddam backwards is “Mad-ass” or something close enough, so, what the heck, let’s not take a chance. There’s no percentage in getting your rear end caught in a mushroom cloud wringer now, is there? And if the events of 9-11 were mad-ass in the extreme, well then the connection to Mad-ass is not that far-fetched. Especially, not far-fetched if you are reasoning bass-ackward (or is it bush-ackward)?
And, the President also said: “When we made the decision to go into Iraq, many intelligence agencies around the world judged that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. This judgment was shared by the intelligence agencies of governments who did not support my decision to remove Saddam. And it is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As President, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq -- and I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that.... Given Saddam's history and the lessons of September the 11th, my decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat -- and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power. We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator; it is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in its place.”
Okay, so we have come full circle from denial to admitting that the intelligence was wrong. Eventually, somebody will recognize that a decision made on a false premise cannot be justified by recasting the premise into something it never was. But the first step is looking at the view from within the carapace and seeing that one of the wheels has fallen off. My Republican friends seem to believe that the President is riding in an 18-wheeler than can continue on 17, and my Democrat friends seem to hope that it is a tricycle that cannot afford to lose a wheel. All I know for certain is that SOB is not riding that scooter any more.
But, you know what troubles me is not the President’s latest ad lib but the failure to acknowledge that more than faulty intelligence was involved. We now know that al-Libi (Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi) was the apparent source of the President’s pre-invasion claims that Madass was training Al-Qaeda operatives in the use of biological weapons. Of course, now that he acknowledges there were no biological weapons, it should follow that Mad-ass could not have trained people to use something that did not exist. But, it’ll take time for such a complex concept to sink in and gel.
You will recall that al-Libi (and no, my Republican friends, he is not related to al-gore) is the guy who claims that his “revelations” about these connections were squeezed out of him while he was being tortured – after he was rendered (I assume that’s the correct word for when one is the object of a rendition) for interrogation by the Egyptians. On the other hand, “rendered” evokes images of being boiled in hot water until you lose a lot of fat. Gee, I’ll have to write about that torture stuff one of these days.
While I am heartened by the President’s slowly evolving ability to grasp what happened – he now takes responsibility, I cannot emphasize more strongly that what really troubles me is that the entire military campaign was based on the statements of one captured Arab that Madass was training Al-Qaeda operatives. Am I missing something or is it just common sense that you don’t go off to war based on what one guy – a fellow you have never met before until you just captured him recently – says?
Unlike some of my Democrat friends, I have been hesitant to say that the President personally misled us into war. I have always said that he made the wrong decision. He has not quite come to saying that much although, for the first time, he admits that the information on which the decision was based, was false.
It is difficult to understand how so many players in the Administration – Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, to name a few of the biggies – could have gone off on an oratorio-like chant about WMD without the President’s involvement as the composer Handel of this particular messianic work. But, I suppose it is possible that he thought these people were being directed by God and doing her work.
There is hope though. Well over a year ago, I wrote a piece saying that it was time to withdraw from Iraq in a sensible way – by moving to the periphery. Congressman Jack Murtha has prompted discussion about withdrawing and the President has suggested that US troops should be pulled back from the cities. Maybe, just maybe, Carl Rover has been reading Breakfast.
Cheerz….Bwana
_________________________________________________________________________________
Breakfast with Bwana
__________________________________________________________________________________
DECEMBER 15, 2005
LOOKING OUT FROM INSIDE THE CARAPACE
THE WHEELS ARE OFF THE PACE CAR:
My Republican friends – yes, I have many who are both, friends and Republicans – accuse me of getting perverse pleasure from picking on the President. Funny thing is, my Democrat friends used to say the same thing when Clinton was President! I can protest until I’m blue in the face that for the satirist in me, fair game is fair game and there’s nothing fair about it. It’s just the fare for my game. They don’t get it.
Actually, in this case, I am more interested in the prospect that the President seems to be realizing that, after all is said and done, God had nothing to do with his becoming President and, most likely, she did not and does not really care.
But, it’s hard to realize such things when one’s cocoon is also one’s carapace. Even the series of recent rah-rah speeches have been delivered in another kind of carapace … one military academy to another … one fort, another base … an aircraft carrier deck … occasionally, a right wing yahoo stronghold. One should not be surprised at enthusiastic applause when the Commander-in-Chief speaks at military gatherings. I mean, if I worked at a company and the CEO came in and said something idiotic, I’d applaud anyway. Why, if I had worked at GE and they showed a video of Jack Welch and Susie Leftover (or whatever her name is) in the GE Imaging Studies boardroom, I’d have applauded that too. Jeff Immelt must have applauded a lot to win out over the guys now running Home Despot and a host of other companies.
Permit me a minor digression. For my Republican friends who have been misled by the title of this piece into thinking that “carapace” has something to do with NASCAR, please get a Funk & Wagnalls. Say it fast: “Funk’nWagnalls” and you’ll get the idea. Say it fast enough, and the wheels come off. Say it soft, and it’s almost like racing. The NASCAR thing … another carapace of sorts … is a pace car.
So, anyway, Prez has been doing his speech-making routine – you know, make basically the same speech six times. Whatever happened to the old adage that if you repeat something three times, people will believe it? Well, let’s give him credit for trying. He’s up to six times and although it hasn’t worked, he is an enthusiastic sort, isn’t he? Some of the bravado and braggadocio are gone, but the there seems to be a new realism setting in.
Yesterday’s speech was outside the usual carapace, but only slightly. Three fourths of the cocoon – Rummy, Condi and Chertoff – were present. CHEstpaiNEY, trying to catch his breath, was in an undisclosed location and still SOB (short of breath). The White House Press Release notes that the speech was delivered at the The Woodrow Wilson Center, in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. Undoubtedly, history will record that it was given from the Donald Rumsfeld Lectern, spoken into the Condoleeza Rice Microphone, and read from the Michael Chertoff Teleprompter.
The President’s strangulating grip on his own self-righteously evident truth is slowly devolving into a soft grasp on reality. But, you have to be alert to catch the subtle loss of his pet squeeze. First, he said: “In the war on terror, Iraq is now the central front -- and over the last few weeks, I've been discussing our political, economic, and military strategy for victory in that country.”
Notice the Bushian slip (yes, it’s related to the “Freudian” slip, but since born-again Methodists don’t have dirty thoughts except about bombing the hell out of the enemy, a new term is in order) that Iraq is “now” the central front. Never mind that a front is a front and not a center. I’ll take “central front” to mean the “center of the front.” I’ll also take “now” to mean “not then.” It is heartening though that, at long last, we have a political, economic, and military strategy for victory.
Keep in mind though that people in carapaces often have convincing conversations with themselves.
Next the President said: “September the 11th also changed the way I viewed threats like Saddam Hussein. We saw the destruction terrorists could cause with airplanes loaded with jet fuel -- and we imagined the destruction they could cause with even more powerful weapons. At the time, the leaders of both political parties recognized this new reality: We cannot allow the world's most dangerous men to get their hands on the world's most dangerous weapons. In an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, if we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.
We removed Saddam Hussein from power because he was a threat to our security.”
This is the first Bushian slip admitting that September 11 caused some change in his thinking about Saddam Hussein. Although we know of the reports that within days of that fateful attack, the President was asking if Hussein could be linked to 9-11, the Administration has steadfastly denied that they sought to manufacture a linkage between the Iraq of then and Al-Qaeda.
Well, now we have direct evidence of backwards reasoning. But then, think about it this way, Saddam backwards is “Mad-ass” or something close enough, so, what the heck, let’s not take a chance. There’s no percentage in getting your rear end caught in a mushroom cloud wringer now, is there? And if the events of 9-11 were mad-ass in the extreme, well then the connection to Mad-ass is not that far-fetched. Especially, not far-fetched if you are reasoning bass-ackward (or is it bush-ackward)?
And, the President also said: “When we made the decision to go into Iraq, many intelligence agencies around the world judged that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. This judgment was shared by the intelligence agencies of governments who did not support my decision to remove Saddam. And it is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As President, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq -- and I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities. And we're doing just that.... Given Saddam's history and the lessons of September the 11th, my decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat -- and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power. We are in Iraq today because our goal has always been more than the removal of a brutal dictator; it is to leave a free and democratic Iraq in its place.”
Okay, so we have come full circle from denial to admitting that the intelligence was wrong. Eventually, somebody will recognize that a decision made on a false premise cannot be justified by recasting the premise into something it never was. But the first step is looking at the view from within the carapace and seeing that one of the wheels has fallen off. My Republican friends seem to believe that the President is riding in an 18-wheeler than can continue on 17, and my Democrat friends seem to hope that it is a tricycle that cannot afford to lose a wheel. All I know for certain is that SOB is not riding that scooter any more.
But, you know what troubles me is not the President’s latest ad lib but the failure to acknowledge that more than faulty intelligence was involved. We now know that al-Libi (Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi) was the apparent source of the President’s pre-invasion claims that Madass was training Al-Qaeda operatives in the use of biological weapons. Of course, now that he acknowledges there were no biological weapons, it should follow that Mad-ass could not have trained people to use something that did not exist. But, it’ll take time for such a complex concept to sink in and gel.
You will recall that al-Libi (and no, my Republican friends, he is not related to al-gore) is the guy who claims that his “revelations” about these connections were squeezed out of him while he was being tortured – after he was rendered (I assume that’s the correct word for when one is the object of a rendition) for interrogation by the Egyptians. On the other hand, “rendered” evokes images of being boiled in hot water until you lose a lot of fat. Gee, I’ll have to write about that torture stuff one of these days.
While I am heartened by the President’s slowly evolving ability to grasp what happened – he now takes responsibility, I cannot emphasize more strongly that what really troubles me is that the entire military campaign was based on the statements of one captured Arab that Madass was training Al-Qaeda operatives. Am I missing something or is it just common sense that you don’t go off to war based on what one guy – a fellow you have never met before until you just captured him recently – says?
Unlike some of my Democrat friends, I have been hesitant to say that the President personally misled us into war. I have always said that he made the wrong decision. He has not quite come to saying that much although, for the first time, he admits that the information on which the decision was based, was false.
It is difficult to understand how so many players in the Administration – Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, to name a few of the biggies – could have gone off on an oratorio-like chant about WMD without the President’s involvement as the composer Handel of this particular messianic work. But, I suppose it is possible that he thought these people were being directed by God and doing her work.
There is hope though. Well over a year ago, I wrote a piece saying that it was time to withdraw from Iraq in a sensible way – by moving to the periphery. Congressman Jack Murtha has prompted discussion about withdrawing and the President has suggested that US troops should be pulled back from the cities. Maybe, just maybe, Carl Rover has been reading Breakfast.
Cheerz….Bwana
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