To build further on Sunday's post, today Eugene Robinson returns again to the delusive psychology of the White House in the wake of "the Decider's" Monday press conference:
According to the Iraqi government, 3,438 civilians were killed in
July, making it the bloodiest month since the invasion. The president
was asked yesterday whether the failure of the U.S.-backed "unity"
government to stem the orgy of sectarian carnage disappoints him, and
he said that no, it didn't. How, I wonder, is that possible? Does he
believe it would be a sign of weakness to admit that the flowering of
democracy in Iraq isn't going exactly as planned? Does he believe
saying everything's just fine will make it so? Is he in denial? Or do
3,438 deaths really just roll off his back after he's had his workout
and a nice bike ride?
"I hear a lot of talk about civil war" in
Iraq, he allowed -- much of it apparently from his own generals, who
have been increasingly bold in using the once-forbidden phrase -- but
all that talk doesn't seem to penetrate very far. To the president, is
all the bad news from Iraq just "talk" without objective reality?
Unfortunately, democracy-promotion so far consists of building the most transparent of facades as a backdrop for freedom proclamations; all the while the facades themselves are busily burning down.
In his news conference, the Decider did make a couple of nods to
objective reality. He admitted in plain language that Iraq had nothing
to do with the Sept. 11 attacks and possessed no weapons of mass
destruction -- in other words, that his rationale for this elective,
preemptive war had no substance.
Indeed, Bush did, in his customarily slippery version of straight talk:
Nothing, except for it's part of -- and nobody has
ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the
attack. Iraq was a -- the lesson of September the 11th is, take threats
before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody has ever suggested that the
attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.
After such grand lies, what sad and hollow little lies (every sane person agrees Osama bin Laden was the attacks' motivator) to which they are now reduced.
(A previous post on a Robinson column.)
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