March 19, 2003: Today five years ago. Better yet is yesterday five years ago. Then there was still a chance, a flicker of a remote possibility something could have stopped the horror from happening; a 24-hour window for a back-to-the future trek to rescue the world from the clutches of crazy people. 

Alas, however, the day is here in all its senseless glory.

Even with all the evidence to the absolute contrary, Decider George has either taken leave of his senses, or he’s playing out his final, cold-hearted cards.

In a badly-produced parody on government, the president of the US peoples said this morning:

“Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting … whether the fight is worth winning … and whether we can win it. The answers are clear to me: Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision and this is a fight America can and must win…
“The terrorists who murder the innocent in the streets of Baghdad want to murder the innocent in the streets of American cities. Defeating this enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home.”

This guy harps about the same thing over and over. And he’s got the unmitigated gall to think we here at Compatible Creatures can’t smell the odor.
A few days ago, Decider George held a techno-get-together with his generals and their assorted minons to discuss how things were about, especially in Afghanistan:

President Bush spoke of his dream to work on the frontline in Afghanistan during a video conference with US military and civilian personnel in the war-torn country.
“I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said.
“If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.
“It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks,” President Bush said.
— heraldsun.com.au 3/14/08

Use of the word ‘gall’ creates  several scenerios, there’s a bunch of definitions for it. A couple, however, tell the tale — one is a personal feeling of bitterness or irritation, and the other, a trait of being rude and impertinent.
Adding the word ‘unmitigated’ (not diminished or moderated in intensity; boundless) to the word ‘gall’ quickly displays Decider George as a guy not completely all there, but still with enough sense to have a ruthless, arrognant attitude.

Unmitigated gall?
We here at Compatible Creatures have gall caught sharp in our throats.

And the romance of those faraway, shell-shocked mountains of Afghanistan.
Does the friends and family of Pat Tillman find the the fighting there romantic? Or the friends and family of the other 486 US GIs killed in Afghanistan — 12 already this year, most likely making the toll higher than the 117 in 2007. Or the friends and families of the other 293 coalition troops.

And ‘envious’ to face horror every day? This from a guy who spent a good portion of the Vietnam War drinking and snorting in Montgomery, Alabama?
“…in some ways, you know, confronting danger.”

Unmitigated gall.

Just after Jackboot John McCain appeared the Republican presidential nominee, Decider George had the real-old boy up to the White House for lunch. During a press conference, after much hugging, blubbering and lying about all kinds of shit, Decider George had the unmitigated gall concerning his future.
“I’m not going to be here,” he said, near brimming with joy, turning toward Jackboot John, “he’ll be here. I’m gonna be down in Crawford, with my feet up.”

And with all the horror Decider George and his cronies have unleashed upon the planet, he will just ride off into the technicolor sunset and retire with “my feet up.”
A life of ease, without a care in the whole, wide world.

Unmitigated gall is not just confined to Decider George. Five years ago today Dufus Dick Cheney, Decider George’s number one/two and most-excellent hatchet man, was stocking warehouses with heavy doses of unmitigated gall.

Just extreme-recent:

BAGHDAD — Vice President Dick Cheney, marking five years since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, reaffirmed on Monday unwavering U.S. support for the Iraqis as they continue down what he called a “difficult but historic route to democracy.”
“It’s good to be back in Iraq,” Cheney said after an hour-long meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
— Associated Press, (3/17/08)
BAGHDAD, March 17 (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday declared the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq a “successful endeavour” during a visit to Baghdad, on the same day a woman suicide bomber killed 40 people.
“If you look back on those five years it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavour … and it has been well worth the effort,” Cheney, an architect of the invasion, said after meeting Iraqi leaders.
“I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago and I sense, as a result of the progress that has been made since then, phenomenal changes in terms of the overall situation,” Cheney said after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
“This visit is important because it comes at a time when there’s a great deal of progress taking place in Iraq,” Maliki said through a translator.

And how about this:

In Baghdad , a long-anticipated Iraqi national reconciliation conference began with great fanfare, then quickly dissolved into the usual sectarian and political stalemates that have marred several similar gatherings in recent years.
But Vice President Dick Cheney gave an upbeat view of conditions in Iraq as he concluded his unannounced trip to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion. Cheney also defended the toppling of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as part of the struggle against terrorism following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
This month, an exhaustive Pentagon-sponsored review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents captured during the 2003 U.S. invasion found no evidence that Saddam’s regime had any operational links with the al-Qaida terrorist network.
But Cheney, who spent the night at a sprawling U.S. base in the northern town of Balad, told soldiers they were defending future generations of Americans from a global terror threat.
“This long-term struggle became urgent on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 . That day we clearly saw that dangers can gather far from our own shores and find us right there at home,” said Cheney, who was accompanied by his wife, Lynne, and their daughter, Elizabeth.
“So the United States made a decision: to hunt down the evil of terrorism and kill it where it grows, to hold the supporters of terror to account and to confront regimes that harbor terrorists and threaten the peace,” Cheney said. “Understanding all the dangers of this new era, we have no intention of abandoning our friends or allowing this country of 170,000 square miles to become a staging area for further attacks against Americans.”
— McClatchy Newspapers, (3/18/07)

Dufus Dick, we here at Compatible Creatures surely know, had a hand in trying to hide the above-mentioned Pentagon report. He was also grounding down this morning on the gritty teeth of fear — those that listen can tell this guy has shit for brains — and really doesn’t give a fat-rat’s-ass about anybody: 

“I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls,” he said in a segment of the interview broadcast Wednesday on “Good Morning America.”
Cheney added: “Think about what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had paid attention to polls, if they had had polls during the Civil War. He never would have succceeded if he hadn’t had a clear objective, a vision for where he wanted to go, and he was willing to withstand the slings and arrows of the political wars in order to get there.”
— ABC News, (3/19/08)

A lie told and then rebuffed by unmitigated gall? A CBS News poll out this morning says 64 percent of Americans think the Iraq war was not worth it.
The reality of the horror and the lie is out there. Perceptive journalist Patrick Cockburn recounts a shitload of a clue:

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the US and the Iraq government both claim that Iraq is becoming a less dangerous place, but the measures taken to protect Mr. Maliki told a different story. Gun-waving soldiers first cleared all traffic from the streets. Then four black armored cars, each with three machine gunners on the roof, raced out of a heavily fortified exit from the Green Zone, followed by sand-coloured American Humvees and more armoured cars. Finally, in the middle of the speeding convoy, we saw six identical bullet proof vehicles with black windows, one of which must have carried Mr. Maliki.
— Patrick Cockburn, counterpunch,org, (3/15/08)

The real horror of this five-year-date of mourning is flesh and blood, and brains, and emotions.

Last weekend in Maryland was Winter Soldier. This was the second installment, the first was during the Vietnam era. Veterans gave eyewitness accounts of life in a countinued meat-grinder of an insurgent war –atrocities arising from the seemingly inhumane US military.

“On April 18, 2006, I had my first confirmed killed. This man was innocent. I don’t know his name. I called him “the fat man.” He was walking back to his house, and I shot him in front of his friend and his father. The first round didn’t kill him, after I had hit him up here in his neck area. And afterwards he started screaming and looked right into my eyes. So I looked at my friend, who I was on post with, and I said, “Well, I can’t let that happen.” So I took another shot and took him out. He was then carried away by the rest of his family. It took seven people to carry his body away.
We were all congratulated after we had our first kills, and that happened to have been mine. My company commander personally congratulated me, as he did everyone else in our company. This is the same individual who had stated that whoever gets their first kill by stabbing them to death will get a four-day pass when we return from Iraq.”
— Jon Michael Turner, former Marine, 3rd battalion, 8th Marines, Democracy Now! (3/17/08)

What effect/affect does never-ending violence have on the human condition. Decider George’s little escapade into Iraq will be suffered for generations.

And he even has the unmitigated gall to even think we care about what he says anymore. The gall caught in the throat, however, of we here at Compatible Creatures has turned slowly into bile, which soon will be processed and then (hopefully, easily, quickly) be passed as shit.