rec.arts.theatre.musicals

My sentiments exactly:

>From Rick Moran at /archives/2007/09/13/bushs-iraq-unrecognizable-from-the-real-thing/
--

President George Bush gave his 6th prime time speech since his
presidency began in the same cocoon that he has comfortably ensconced
himself since the Iraq War began.

The fact that he's given so few speeches talking to the American
people about a cause he himself has identified as vital to the War on
Terror, failing spectacularly to explain as honestly and forthrightly
as possible where we are, where we need to be, and where we are going
in Iraq, guarantees that the American people have stopped listening to
him.

In short, his credibility when talking about the war is as low as it
could possibly go. It is his own fault. He can command attention
whenever he desires it and the news nets must cover what he says. But
over the years, his start and stop, herky jerky efforts to rally the
American people to his policies has fallen far short of what was
needed and necessary. Instead, he allowed his political opponents to
define the war, the mission, even the president's own motives in going
to war while substituting a narrative that savaged him and people who
supported him.

It would help if the President would give us the castor oil with the
honey when he talks about Iraq. He never has. The Iraq he talked about
in his speech does not exist. It is not a place of "freedom" or
"democracy." A legitimate argument can be made that it doesn't even
have a government. Holding elections does not define a nation as a
democracy. There is no freedom without citizens being secure in their
property and lives. The government in Iraq cannot guarantee either and
in fact, elements of that government are consciously engaged in
activities to dispossess Sunni Muslims of both.

For all the security gains in some of the Sunni provinces and all the
good work being done with the tribes in enlisting them to help fight
al-Qaeda, there are other areas of the country where the situation on
the ground has not gotten any better and is demonstrably worse. As the
Brits abandon the south, the militias are taking over and will
eventually fight for control, the government in Baghdad be damned.
Iran is salivating at the opportunities offered by this "civil war
within a civil war" and will only gain in influence whoever comes out
on top.

Our friends the Kurds, patiently waiting for the day when they can
make a clean break from Iraq and declare their independence (along
with fellow Kurds across the border in Iran and Turkey who are
carrying out terrorist attacks against civilian targets in those
countries) are experiencing hit and run attacks by Shias who seek
control of the vital oil center of Kirkuk. Car bombs, suicide bombs,
assassinations, and even the occasional firefight has broken out in
recent months as both sides gauge the possibilities of an America that
is about to pull out.

And Baghdad? No one controls Baghdad. Not the government. Not the
militias. Not the criminal gangs that continue to terrorize residents
almost as much as the sectarian gangs that are driving people out of
their homes and the death squads who still manage a tidy body count
every day despite the increased presence of American and Iraqi troops.

The Iraq I have just partially described (don't get me started on the
police, the army, the Council of Representatives, the Interior
Ministry, the corruption, or that empty suit of a sectarian gangster
Maliki) is Iraq as it is - a morass of security, social, political,
economic, and psychic problems that no army on the planet can fix. It
is also an Iraq that George Bush didn't come close to acknowledging as
existing in his speech tonight.

We are all big boys and girls. George Bush treats us like children,
afraid that telling us the truth of what is going on in Iraq or at
least being realistic about describing the situation will scare us or
cause us to want to hide under the bed. It is depressing. The
disconnect between the Iraq Bush describes and the real thing is not
lost on the American people who I believe would respond much more
positively to Bush if he didn't try and sugarcoat the situation.