Listening To Bush Now Would Be A 'Disaster': Blueduck

President Bush gave another press conference on Iraq this morning.

AFP: Quitting Iraq now would be a 'disaster': Bush"

The odd thing is that some people are treating this like it was a big deal! First of all, he does this little song-and-dance on a regular basis. He remembers that the war is unpopular, comes out all dressed up nicely, speaks while not even bothering to give us a variation on the usual 'stay the course' rhetoric, lies about some stuff, thanks us, and then goes for a jog. There should be a new rule put in place for this crap... unless the President has something new to report or has actually come up with one of those 'war plans' or 'exit strategies' that were so popular back in the day, no media entity- not one newspaper, wire service, or TV network- should cover these farces. He's not saying anything newsworthy, so stop treating it like breaking news. Hey, did John Karr confess to killing Natalie Holloway or is that happening next month? Let's look into that.

The two big parts of this press conference that people seem to be focusing on are not new revelations. The first- the one the wire services are headlining- was Bush's remark that "We’re not leaving so long as I’m the president. That would be a huge mistake." Well that's not news. The President made clear his 'I'm just gonna leave my mess for the next guy to clean up approach' to this war as far as back as March when he said about U.S. forces leaving Iraq, "That, of course, is an objective, and that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq". See you in 2009!

To give up on Iraq would be to lose 'our soul as a nation', President Bush said today. Sir, you sold that for thirty pieces of silver years ago. He also said as bad as Iraq is now, it would be worse if we left. He's right- why, civil war may even break out!

The second part- that a few blogs are focusing on- was the President dismissing the notion that his administration ever implied direct links between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks (of course, this disavowment came only after a reporter called him on his attempts just seconds earlier to use the attacks to justify the invasion!!). Yessir, that significant percentage in polls who still believe Iraq had a hand in the 9/11 attacks must've gotten that idea from somebody else! But again, this isn't new. They've been making that denial for a while now too... along with denying that they expressed certainty on the WMD issue, that they claimed Iraq was an imminent threat to America, or even ever advocated their own invasion of Iraq in the first place, etc etc.

Just a note, though- he also did say that he was "concerned" about all the "talk about civil war" he's been hearing. Silly White House gossip! This is a little better than earlier this month when he said, "You know, I hear people say, Well, civil war this, civil war that. The Iraqi people decided against civil war when they went to the ballot box." Maybe we're making progress after all!

In the end, I have to believe that most people know by now that the President is a liar. I'm tired of hearing it and I'm tired of saying it. Wake me up when somebody decides to do something about that.