It sure is good to be president when you have a few victories in your pocket.
Dear Mom and Dad:
What a difference a few weeks make! If someone had said to me last month that we would have bagged Zarqawi in Iraq, I would have replied that there was a better chance of me sprouting another head. It takes a little good luck, as well as all the hard work our brave servicemen and women have been doing in Iraq, to make that happen. And, Dad, at the time, that seemed unlikely in the least.
And heck, it surely seems like if I didn’t have bad luck, I’d have no luck at all these days. Sorry to sound so 1992-ish, Dad, but it has been that type of presidential term. You had a Democratic Congress and the Iran-Contra/Caspar Weinberger scandal; I have Osama Bin Laden and a press corps gone stark-raving liberal-mad.
And don’t think the Democrats in Congress don’t see this. Now I really understand why Mom genuinely disliked those folks over at the New York Times. I’m sorry, Mom, that I ever even doubted you.
It’s just amazing, though, how good the last two weeks have been. First, we finally “Bring Zarqawi to justice,” which is what I have to say to the press instead of what Rover said to me, which is “we killed that son of a …” Well, you get the picture.
And speaking of my chief counsel: Karl is “officially” off the hook, and there will be no “Fitzmas in July” as the bloggers like to say. Come to think of it, I think the mainstream media was echoing that as well.
Even the polls are starting to look up a bit, as I was down there in Nixon-territory for quite some time. Still not as good as we need to get them, but it’s a start, and I hope to heck that the conservative base sees that its president can “take a licking and keep on ticking,” or something like that.
Why, Dad, we even managed to keep my emergency request bill at a manageable $94.5 billion. The Senate tried to roll over me, like they did with you dad when they buffaloed you into raising taxes in 1990. The House held the line, but the Senate tried for a few billion more. I stood tough, and threatened a veto, though I cannot for the life of me seem to find that darn veto pen.
But I guess the best was going off to see the troops in Iraq. Mom, dad, it was just a success all around, as I met with the new Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and urged him, like dad would often say to us kids, to “seize the moment” in Iraq. We are going to stay the course there, and we are going to win.
But I think this momentum, or this “good week” as the press calls it, has been happening for a bit. Just look at who I brought into the fold recently, right? Josh Bolton is now chief of staff, Tony Snow is press secretary, and I got Hank Paulson as treasury secretary. How’s that for staff talent, dad?
I’m being told that the biggest moment of the week was the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I felt a sense of triumph for the Iraqi people, and the American people who have been so patient with me, when “Maj. Gen. William Caldwell displayed the framed picture of Zarqawi’s lifeless face in triumph at a news conference last week.”
Of course, the media don’t see it that way. Already, they are starting to say regarding my good fortune that, "That's when the 'Bushisms' happen. That's when we see his hubris." Yeah, I think that was Claire Shipman reporting that on Good Morning, America. I mean, the week is barely over, and already I’m toast. Well, Mom, you always said that if you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything. I wish the media would take a cue from you.
After I returned home from Iraq to that Rose Garden news conference that was nothing short of a chest-beating exercise in politics, I got to thinking of our party’s chances in November, and I like them.
Dad, I have never seen such silliness in a party than what I see in the Democrats. Take those two resolutions voted upon in the House and Senate. You would think Senator Kerry would have learned his lesson in 2004, with his flip-flopping and “I voted for the war before I voted against it” nonsense. Instead, Kerry loses big-time, 93-6 on his own resolution that called for the withdrawal of the troops. And they call me dumb.
The House vote was more of the same, but that resolution stated a “completion of the mission" in Iraq and rejects any "arbitrary" deadline for an American troop withdrawal.” The outcome? The vote was 256 to 153, with over 75% of the Democratic Party voting against that bill!
With Democrats, it does not even seem to be a question of pulling out or not anymore. Now, it’s just a question of when.
Well, I have to get back to the residence, as Laura is waiting patiently for me to return. Dad, happy Father’s Day to you. And Mom, I love you, and I will see you both soon at the house. I think I will try to push through that immigration reform that I have been working on, and also see if I can get Frist to push through some of those judges that have been sitting on the back burner for so long.
Heck, Mom and Dad, it sure is good to be president when you have a few victories in your pocket and a song on your lips, but I know that these victories are always fleeting. But then again, the fortunes are such in Washington that even the most besieged have their days in the sun.
Come November, we all just might look back at these few weeks in June and realize just how timely, and possibly majority-saving, these events were. Of course, it helps that the opposition party makes about as much sense these days as a nun in a brothel. I will, as always, keep you both up to date. The twins say hello.
Your Loving Son,
Dubya
Hooray for our side! Victory in Iraq. So genius, what does that mean? Saddam had WMDs, he hid them well, now they are somewhere in the ME (among some of our friends maybe, well hopefully, or maybe he hid them and destroyed the map?) Well now we don’t seem to have too many friends over there do we? The taliban are still dying, and dying and dying. But Al Queda is for all we know still plotting and may or may not successfully pull off an attack here in the US or against one of our allies. Why? Because they have a seemingly inexaustable supply of #3 men who don’t commit suicide but die from our bombs while the #4 and #5 guys do, trading 1 meat bomb for 5 or more pieces of jellyware, aka victims which we cannot seem to stop from happening. BTW, we don’t know if any Al Queda are here in the US simply because our President has allowed the Southern and Northern borders to remain open gashes for all to come. But don’t worry, he and our glorious and righteous Congressional leaders assure us that it’s only friendly brown skinned Mexicans wanting to rake your dirt and not blow you up. In Iraq there are as many car bombs as ever, as many deaths since Saddam, Al Zarquawi (sp?), and a hundred #3 men were killed, but its becoming realized that our ridiculously stupid attempt to spread some nebulous concept of democracy to a bunch of sewage waste of a people (yes, I have lived and worked in the middle east, so I know the people, they are not like us, believe me.) is failing. To control Iraq in any sense of the word ‘control’ will require…Guess what? A brutal thug dictator much like Saddam, who, I believe was on speaking terms with our Government at one or more times in the past. Democracy is kind of funny for barbaric peoples such as Muslims: they tend to elect barbarians for leaders, go figure… Hahah! As far as Afghanistan goes, somehow we keep on finding more and more taliban to have to fight and kill off as this week’s current largest operation to remove the taliban exhibits. Remarkable considering they were a bunch of Stone Age savages ousted some 3 or 4 years ago. Just like in Ramadi, Quaim, and in the so called Triangle of death, and in the Oruzgan district, the dusty town of Kandahar, and mountains around kabul which seem to repopulate themselves with our so called enemies as soon as US or coalition troops leave or go back to garrison and lo and behold we have to go back in to remove them. Maybe our methods of fighting this group of terrorists (since we are not fighting a war in the WWII sense) are not going to work long term.
At best, we are doing what would be the equivalent in WWII of going to Germany invading and taking over without bombing Dresden, ball bearing factories in Düsseldorf or Berlin, and hunting down just Hitler, Goebbels and a few top SS men or Nazis and calling the war good. Then remaining there while we left the SS soldiers and the Wermacht soldiers intact with all their equipment and beliefs and fighting them for the next 40 years. But that did not happen. Why? I don’t remember our leaders (both political and military) back then; Truman, Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Nimitz calling Nazism and Shinto good things? Do you? Or have you read that they have? Because that is what our genius President and his staff and our brilliant military leaders have done with our 452 trillion, Eleventy bizzilion dollars spent on this war, excuse me, effort to capture some terrorist’s thugs and one old geezer dying from cancer and put on trial in an Armani suit. When our young troops quit dying or losing arms and legs from IEDs, VBIEDs/car bombs and suicide meat bombs, and THE WESTERN NATIONS OR OUR ALLIES have not suffered from anymore terrorist’s attacks from muslims or crazed white guys, I guess we can say we won. Are we feeling lucky?
here’s an idea; I think maybe all the billionaire politicians, both Dems and Repubs, along with their lobbyists and corporate sponsors and gov. bureaucrats can put down a few BILLION of their own personal dollars and start supporting the children of not only the 2500 brave young men of our military who died in this fiasco but also those who now have to be supported because their daddys’ lost arms and legs or eyes and cannot find nice high paying jobs. Hows that for supporting our troops? Maybe all the big Corps and Politicians, Kennedy, Bush, Cheney, Murtha, Reid, etc. can put up some of their personal fortunes and take care of the youngsters so that the taxpayers won’t have to.
Dean
Here are some questions because I am very busy, maybe I missed the answers:
-What exactly is victory in Iraq?
-Just how long does it take to train a police and military force?
-Can the Iraqis sustain a democracy or should we bring back Pol Pot and Stalin to help control the beats in some bizarre brutal love triangle?
-Remember who the Palestinians elected and considering the typical Muslim mind can they sustain even a modicum of a semblence of democracy? or should we just reincarnate Hitler and give them what they want?
–Maybe with Hitler actually running the terrorist campaign over there as an enemy our glorious leaders and peace lovers would actually do something since he is a politically correct enemy.
So can someone define victory in Iraq and then actually believe given Arab/Persian Muslim reality believe its possible? No fantasy wishes, those are for little girls.