The updated tally for this morning’s car bomb in a Shiite crowd is 70 dead. Another car bomb killed at least five Shiites three days ago. On November 24 another car bomb killed 22 Shiites. They were mourning the dead from a round of car bombs and mortars on November 23 which killed at least 161 people in Sadr City. Tortured corpses litter Baghdad streets and the Iraqi countryside.
White House press secretary Tony Snow conceded Monday that conditions in Iraq are “not getting better fast enough,” but he insisted “the strategy for victory is working.”
I guess Tony has a point. Similarly the Titanic isn’t un-rotting, rising from the ocean floor, reassembling itself and backing away from the iceberg anywhere near fast enough. If only the dumb ship would would hurry up.
srv
Is there a point at which your credibility is so low that even Fox won’t take you back?
Probably not.
pie
After we get the fuck out of there, we have a moral obligation to take in a lot of Iraqi refugees. Matter of fact, we should start offering up those asylum visas right about now.
Aphorism Guy
The basis of optimism is sheer terror. -Wilde
VidaLoca
Yes. But by now we’re all smart enough to have guessed how well this is going to go, and why:
Nothing will be done about getting the troops and equipment out of there until it’s much too late — but at least when something is done the troops will have organization, means to protect themselves, and a safe place to go if they can make it there. The Iraqi civilians will have none of these.
norbizness
MongoRefugees but pawn in game oflifefailed foreign policy.Tsulagi
No doubt Tony and his predecessor, Scotty, bring a tear to Baghdad Bob’s eye. Both adding their personality to make his schtick their own.
Scotty’s delivery was stiff taking the stonewall approach endlessly repeating the same words when questioned. Tony? He favors the packaging and repackaging of lies delivered with attitude saying “You’re a jackass if you don’t believe and repeat this obvious bullshit.” All three chips off the same block.
ThymeZone
How Snow can get up every morning, get dressed, go to work and mouth that horseshit in front of witnesses is beyond me.
It says something bad about human beings when seemingly normal persons can lie and make up shit and watch other people die for it, day in and day out, and just keep on doing it. Over and over and over and over again.
I call it the Kissinger Effect.
jake
Because appearances are all that matter in the Bush Leagues! Hooray! Just keep smiling while people die like rats and everything will be swell. Besides, the second (or third) reason for the war was to export democracy. It would be pretty durn silly to schlep democracy to Iraq only to have the citizens bring it right back to where it started! The US might suffer a democracy overload and them things is nasty.
And of course it would also be “extraordinarily awkward” if the refugees complained about the reason they had to travel half-way around the world to the U.S. I also imagine it would be “extraordinarily awkward” for the refugees, whom would likely be required to wear tracking devices because they might be Islamo-baddies.
Elvis Elvisberg
Hey, the president has to take some time to contemplate reviewing the options from the ISG involving the possible shift in strategy in the coming months and years. He’s the decider, and what’s best is
for Donald Rumsfeld to remain the Secretary of Defenseto sit around with our thumbs up our asses while people die for no reason.Krista
I can’t even snark that, I’m too disgusted.
Besides, who’s this audience for the psychological message anyway? The Iraqi civilians already think it’s flying all to fuck. The rest of the world already thinks it’s flying all to fuck. The majority of Americans already think it’s flying all to fuck. The only people who DON’T think it’s flying all to fuck are the die-hard, in-denial warmongering Bushites who wouldn’t be convinced that Iraq is royally screwed, even if they were deposited into the middle of Sadr City.
So, evidently, the refugees are going to have to fend for themselves and try not to get killed, all because Bush is too goddamned proud and arrogant to admit that this war was ill-conceived from the start, and botched at every stage of the game. I can see why pride is a deadly sin — too many people have died because someone else had to save face.
ThymeZone
Well, in order to hasten America’s response to the death machine that is Iraq, our president has decided he needs more time to think it all over.
This also gives George and Laura more time to get their Christmas shopping done.
demimondian
The president needs more time to listen to God and the voices in his head.
grumpy realist
And our beloved Preznit will sit around, thumb up his arse (thank you, Elvis) just waiting for someone else to pull his nuts out of this ever slowly closing vise? Because that’s what it looks like.
If I were Sadr and wanted to give us a really, really bad Xmas….
TenguPhule
He used to work for FOX ‘News’, shilling for the Whitehouse wasn’t much of a change of pace for him.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
stickler
That’s what worries me right now. Folks on anti-depressants already should really, really avoid reading Steve Gilliard tonight. He seems to think that Bush is going to go after Sadr and the Sunnis real soon. I don’t like the implications of that.
srv
Well, where are all those Canuck Visas for the poor Iraqis?
West Coast libertarian
I thought a Canuck Visa was a loyalty credit card for the hockey team
MM
“Eventually,” said Mr. Snow, “One sect will kill all of the members of the other sect and violence will subsequently drop dramatically. At that point we will be ready to hand the country to the surviving Iraqi citizens and declare victory.”
CaseyL
Hell, that’s what the ISG Report was supposed to be for, and the Fuckwad in Chief ignored that, too.
He genuinely doesn’t give a damn. Those people dying – Iraqis and US soldiers – I don’t think they’re real to him.
I know it’s silly to make psychological diagnoses from a distance, but if Bush isn’t a pathological narcissist, or an outright sociopath, he does a damn good impersonation of one.
What he can’t seem to do a convincing impersonation of is a functioning human being.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
And I wish I was only spoofing.
pie
True. I was hypothesizing an American President that actually gave a shit about the lives of innocent civilians, I guess. Maybe we’ll get one in 2009, I’m sure we’ll still have troops in Iraq then so we should be able to evacuate the surviving Iraqis out of that place.
Maybe that’s the plan, though. Think should let the civil war continue until everyone over there is dead or a refugee, then resettle the place with Americans?
Iraq, the 51st state, and by far the greatest, after the great state of Texas!
Don’t mess with Texas. Or Iraq. And… fuck you, Yankee moonbats.
Sherard
You guys are precious. Bush doesn’t care about civilians, but when we leave next week at your request, what the hell do you think is going to happen ?
Sherard
In other news, crime in Washington DC isn’t going down fast enough, so our intellectual superiors claim that disbanding the police and moving them out of the city, is the preferred solution.
pie
The same thing that’s happening now, only with far fewer American casualties.
jake
No, he’s screaming: Leave my nuts alone! My nuts don’t cut and run! History will vindicate my nuts!
The Other Steve
I’m curious.
These tortured corpses. How exactly where they tortured and not killed?
The worst torture any of us can possibly imagine is Che pointing an empty gun at your head and clicking the trigger. But we all know that suffers no bodily harm, so it’s hard to imagine that people would die from that.
ThymeZone
Sherard’s spoof credentials are suspended for showing a lack of effort here.
Police? Police don’t hunker down in a fortress, they go out and establish order. Nobody can do that in Iraq right now. Not the Americans, and not the Iraqis.
That’s pretty much the whole point. If they could, we wouldn’t be over here watching this never-ending train wreck and wondering when the hell the people in charge are going to face reality.
Now go back to your Learn Spoofing in 21 Days book and start over, son.
Steve
Yeah, no kidding. The “Baghdad is just like Detroit” meme has been worth zero points for a while now.
chopper
i used to live in DC. DC was a friend of mine. DC is no baghdad.
ThymeZone
Opps … jig = up?
Where does this go? $150 oil? Bush resigns?
pie
Detroit is actually much, much worse than Baghdad.
Most of those bodies found in Baghdad were actually exported there by the Detroit street gangs, and the car bombs are just a clever ruse to cover it up. In reality, things in Baghdadf are just fine. It’s no worse than a relatively peaceful big city, like Paris or Zurich.
Tim F.
And hand the country over to…SCIRI? I guess bin Laden took a break from writing our foreign policy. Now it’s Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
Andrew
Duh, that’s cause Baghdad is like Philadelphia, not Detroit.
Zifnab
I thought it was like D.C., because of all the politicians and colored people.
Andrew
If only Baghdad had a strongman like Marion Barry!
ThymeZone
Baghdad needs a mayor like Frank Rizzo.
ThymeZone
That’s what I’m talking about.
We need to open up a little can of Frank Rizzo on the Iraqis.
Tsulagi
The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq? Sure, why not? A group founded and supported by Iran? No problem. Last week our leader looked into the eyes of its leader, Hakim, and pronounced his soul good. Tony Snow will tell you that’s all you need to know.
ThymeZone
See, I don’t get how he does that while on his knees to the Saudis.
Our leader must be more limber than he appears.
Acrobatic, he is.
Jake
He’s got his head jammed so far up his arse he looks at the world through his navel, that’s pretty damn limber in my book.
Krista
Brings whole new meaning to the term “navel-gazing” doesn’t it?
Steve
That’s awesome. I wonder if the folks back home in Detroit have ever looked into this.
Tsulagi
The problem is, Assrocket would tell you, is that you don’t see the genius of the plan shaping up. To use his words, it’s another masterpiece waiting to be unveiled.
Sadr and his Mahdi Army are Hakim’s SCIRI and Badr Brigades main rival for power. Also, Sadr has strayed too far from the Iranian reservation. His AK and drill happy militia is worse for the Sunnis than the Badr Brigades, but he’s too independent for SCIRI Shia and Iran. What to do?
I know, I know! Let’s join with SCIRI on a new political realignment. SCIRI aligns with the main Sunni political group, Kurds say okay, and everyone agrees Sadr is the bad guy to get. We get a new boogyman to focus on.
The Sunnis get the heat taken off (temporarily) them. Cheney with his kneepads on tells the Saudis “See, we’re looking out for your guys.” Sunnis win, for the moment. SCIRI wins. We become Iran’s hitmen in Iraq. Iran wins. Bushy gets to say he’s changing course moving forward (or a better catchy slogan) while using up two years for the handoff. Everybody wins.
LOL. That’s all conjecture, but more than a few recent developments could support it. What we need is a single boogyman with a face so the dwindling Bushy brigades can focus and occupy themselves on that. Too many have been noticing the brain-dead incompetence of The Deciderator.