Death of 2,000; Dearth of Ideas

The death toll of US troops in Iraq has hit the 2,000 mark, so what does the administration plan to do about it? Page 3 in the playbook—send out Bushie-Boy to give a speech at Bolling Air Force Base today.

Bush will try to put the sacrifice in perspective by portraying the Iraq war as the best way to keep terrorists from striking the United States again, the official said. He will make the same case in another speech Friday in Norfolk.

Wow, fucking genius!

Although Bush has made this case often, aides hope the public will be more receptive in the aftermath of the apparently successful referendum vote for a new Iraqi constitution, whose official results will be announced this week.

Good luck with all that.

Failing to have come up with any new ideas for dealing with the onslaught of bad news resulting from five years of dreadful policy, the Bush team has decided to borrow a page from some other bloke’s playbook:

Consciously or not, Bush seemed to echo that line last week in the Rose Garden when he was asked about all the problems afflicting his White House. Dismissing all the "background noise," Bush said, "the American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to."

"I think I've heard that one before," Mark Fabiani, a former Clinton White House lawyer, said with a laugh yesterday. "But it comes down to the person. Anybody can deliver the line. The question is: Can you compartmentalize these issues so they don't consume you? And I think Bush's job is more difficult than Clinton's because the questions here go right to the heart of the presidency."

Indeed. And I think the country as a whole was better off when the questions just went to the pants of the presidency.

For a start, we didn’t have 2,000 dead soldiers to mourn.