More BushSpeak

Shortly after Sept. 11, George W. Bush interrupted his inveighing against evildoers to crack a joke. Bush had repeatedly promised to run an overall budget surplus at least as large as the Social Security surplus, except in the event of recession, war or national emergency. "Lucky me," he remarked to Mitch Daniels, his budget director. "I hit the trifecta."

  Common Dreams article

Bush in Ohio, April 2007:

Nobody ought to ever hope to be a war President, or a presidency -- a President during war.

Well, you get the idea. "It just, poof!"

Bush's "speeches" seem to have gotten noticeably more incoherent lately. Have they quit giving him his meds, or have they just slowly started abandoning him to his own devices? Whoever was providing the prompting on his wire - has that person been removed? What are Karl and Dick up to?

Bubble Boy just doesn't know when to stay in the bubble within his bubble (the inner bubble) - but then, in the past, somebody's always bailed him out when he screws things up; perhaps he is conditioned to believe it will always happen.

This bit is just beyond my interpretive abilities:

It's an interesting war, isn't it, where asymmetrical warfare is -- and that means people being able to use suicide bombers -- not only, obviously, kills a lot of innocent people, like which happened yesterday in Iraq, but also helps define whether or not we're successful.

[...]

If the definition of success in Iraq or anywhere is no suicide bombers, we'll never be successful.

Does that mean that he realizes we have no chance at success in the "war against terror"? Because, the existence of suicide bombers somewhere would surely mean there was still terrorism, wouldn't it?

Think about that: if our definition is no more suiciders, you've just basically said to the suiciders, go ahead.

I'm trying to think about it. I just can't. I am incapable of understanding that. But I vote we preserve this man's brain for future scientific study, unless we're sure he isn't just syphilitic, in which case we probably already have enough specimen brains. Maybe it's my brain that's the problem, but it seems to me that if you allow for success to include some suicide bombing, then that's when you've said to the suicide bombers, go ahead.

Something else is "interesting" (and I really love this bit):

I like to remind people that my dad was a 18-year-old kid when he signed up to -- for the United States Navy in World War II, and went off to combat in a really bloody war. And yet, his son becomes the President, and one of his best friends in the international scene was the Prime Minister of Japan. Prime Minister Koizumi was a partner in peace. Isn't it interesting? I think there's a historical lesson there, that liberty has got the capacity to transform enemies to allies.

His father was just a kid who fought in the war, and yet his son became president. !! No mention at all that the father himself became president. Not even subliminal, that self-reference. Just slipped it in there, in a totally irrelevant context. The fact of the son becoming president has nothing to do with the "interesting" bit he is conveying about the Prime Minister of Japan becoming a "partner in peace" and best friend of Bush Sr. Is this guy all about himself, or what? (No mention of the son getting a pass on going into the really bloody war of Viet Nam due to his father's pulling strings, either.)

Iran wants to -- they've stated they'd like to have -- let me just say, we believe they would like to have a nuclear weapon.

I have to hand him some credit there for pulling back before he got off into that lie again. He did it again shortly, saying what he was describing is a real scenario, and immediately rephrasing it as "a real possibility for a scenario." Then again, I suppose it is only a matter of time before a new Office of Special Plans offers him cooked up evidence of the hints he's dropping. Worked before.

And then, again, since he said it a second time:

This is a nation that has said they want to have a nuclear -- or we believe wants to have a nuclear weapon.

The possibility exists that he's repeating the lie, knowing that even if he corrects it, the lie will be imprinted. But that's giving him credit for knowing what he's saying, and it's hard to make that judgment when you've got such overwhelming evidence against it.

He claims that he actually told Iraq's president that he, the President of Iraq, has an obligation to U.S. citizens to show people he's capable of moving Iraq toward reconciliation amongst conflicting factions. Yes, Iraq is obliged to satisfy us here.

But, if we were to leave before accomplishing that mission that we accomplished already...

[T]here would be a violence -- level of violence that would spill out beyond just the capital, could spill out beyond Iraq. And then you would have ancient feuds fueled by extremists and radicals competing for power -- radical Shia, radical extreme Sunnis, all competing for power. They would happen to share two enemies: one, the United States and Israel, for starters, and every other moderate person in the Middle East.

Where have you been George Van Winkle? From all accounts I've been reading, that's exactly what's happening - the competition for power amongst rivaling factors. And, aside from the fact that he has counted two enemies while listing many, to use one of George's favorite expressions, isn't it "interesting" that he refers to the United States and Israel as one?

By the way, just in case you didn't think the people in the audience are reading from cue cards provided by the White House, have a look at this question:

Mr. President, how would you respond to the rather mistaken idea that the war in Iraq is becoming a war in Vietnam?

His priceless answer was to enumerate some ways in which they are very different, and then to add, "There are some similarities, of course -- death is terrible." (And the other similarity: they're televised. Although I would debate that particular similarity, considering the televised reporting in Iraq is from embedded reporters. Not quite the same: in Viet Nam, the real war was televised.)

Anyway, this post has gotten way too long, so I'll finish with a question: What is it with this buffoon and the "I call it this - you can call it this or that or whatever" stuff? Is he doing musicals now? Tomato, tomahto, potato potahto. What?

I call it a global war against terror. You can call it a global war against extremists, a global war against radicals, a global war against people who want to hurt America; you can call it whatever you want.

[...]

I call it, reinforce, you can call it, surge, there's all kind of words for it.

You can read the "speech" - well, he calls it speech, you can call it a mindbender, garble, alcohol-induced blubbering; whatever you want - here. I certainly couldn't read it all. And there's another transcript of a later speech in Grand Rapids. A very quick perusal looks like they either put him back on his meds or gave him back the wire after that fiasco in Ohio.

You can check it out for yourself.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.