- Upon receiving the not-altogether-hideous news, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was reportedly optimistic, but could not predict a realistic time frame in which the overall conditions in Iraq would become the opposite of terrifying, or even sort of halfway livable. However, Gates did say that if the bombings are any indication of future conditions, the situation in Iraq could be upgraded to “nightmarish” within months.
“We see before us the promise of a new Iraq, one that is only marginally devastating or even, God willing, just temporarily horrific,” Gates said. “A couple more days like this and I don’t see any reason why our troops won’t be able to come home slightly earlier than never.”
                   — ‘Not-So-Horrible Thing Happens In Iraq’ from theonion.com (10/22/07)
Spin can be measured by watching the wind. In many instances, as sang before, you don’t got to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. A good indicator of the spin’s immediate impression: Source of the wind.
We here at Compatibles Creatures receive news via the Internet. And upon seeing headlines on the FEMA faux press conference appearing at several sites late one recent evening generated first shock, then a notion it was a spoof of some FEMA act of arrogant incompetence (and these are many-numerous), and even the photo accompanying some stories appeared somewhat realistic, though Daily Show sets can occasionally seem right, yet we felt an uneasy sense of the verifiable and genuine.
Once the mind understood, this perception lead to feelings of utter disbelief at the complete and utter disregard for reality in all of Decider George’s government: Like minds do run together, but in this case, brainless shit-bile oozes downhill from the White House into every pore of the federal system.
And the FEMA faux press conference: Inconceivable brain-dead blunder to even consider such a thing after Katrina. Apparently at every level there’s dumb-shitness. No stories seen about some FEMA employee standing up and saying: ‘Hey Guys, this idea about a press conference, I don’t think is a real-good idea.’ No. Every goofy-assed sonofabitch within a five-miles radius wanted in on the make-believe-it’s-real event and wacked the show together in minutes — anybody can be a dumb-ass reporter asking dumb-ass questions — what harm could it do? Not a brain alive in the whole, freaking crowd. And to make it even more-dumb was Michael Chertoff scolding his own people.
Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, under which FEMA rests, has displayed enough foolishness in public to be rendered completly useless; whatever he says is not to be believed at all. According to a report this week from NBC, screeners at airports were tipped-off to an upcoming supposedly-random department test on efficiency, but still failed miserably.
Skeletal, sharp-faced and wing-nut-looking, Charnoff is a joke.
Black humor. Texas guffaw. In the last six years, however, Decider George’s crowd has created a national/world catastrophe so serious there is absolutely no room for laughter. And despite the nose on Chertoff’s face, Decider George continues being arrogant, ignorant and obnoxious – a worse type of asshole.
In press conferences this week, along with a little Oval Office “pen and pad” FEMA-like meeting with certain members of the press — why call the event ‘pen and pad’ when the entire thing was strickly off-the-record — Decider George did nothing but put blame on every kind of shit on just about everybody else but hisself.
“Some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden, and the requests of our commanders on the ground and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters,” he blubbered during a speech to a collection of right-winged think-tankers at the Heritage Foundation.
And he mangled-up history again. “Now we’re at the start of a new century, and the same debate is once again unfolding, this time regarding my policy in the Middle East… Once again, voices in Washington are arguing that the watchword of the policy should be stability. History teaches us that underestimating the words of evil, ambitious men is a terrible mistake. Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. And the question is, will we listen?”
The far-more-enormous question here: Are YOU listening? And an almost-important secondary question: If you do listen, who do you listen to? (Awkward sentence structure — who or whom? over-use of the word, “listen,” and, “do” and “to” – but the point is made fairly obvious). Whomever has Decider George’s Texas-sized ears has been whispering about shit while claiming it’s just rain.
History is based on back story, just as everyday life, and what’s missing from all of Decider George’s historical recollections, from World War II to Vietnam to the war on terror is reality. And another piece missing is Decider George’s own back story in this continuing historical tale, which is frightingly called “current” events.
Despite results from the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute this week that 52 per cent of those polled support Congress setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and 55 per think even going to war with Iraq was wrong, Decider George on Friday continued his twisted spin on historical bullshit, i.e., current events, before a captive crowd — new soldiers at Fort Jackson, SC.
“By taking the fight to the enemy in Iraq, we will defeat the terrorists there so we do not have to face them in the United States,” he blubbered, bringing applause, which could only be surmised as sadly ironic, from the boys and girls who themselves would soon have to face that vaporous, ever-elusive “enemy in Iraq.”
How about the boots already on the ground over there? In a much-quoted story last week from the Washington Post focusing on the 1st Battalion, 18th Regiment stationed in southwest Baghdad, some GIs struck a much-more realistic chord. This from Staff Sgt. Richard McClary, a 27-year-old section leader from Buffalo, NY:
“They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the higher-ups don’t go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places, places with a little bit of gunfire…They don’t ever [expletive] see what we see on the ground.”
When asked if the war was worth it, another GI, Sgt. Victor Alarcon, responded: “I don’t think this place is worth another soldier’s life.”