Iraqmire Update

Response to Bush's speech on Iraq ranges from tepid to savage. The cartoon by Oliphant in the Boston Globe showing Bush strutting over a sea of coffins being the most graphic, but there is also this column by Bob Herbert in the NY Times. Titled "Dangerous Incompetence" he begins:

"The president who displayed his contempt for Iraqi militants two years ago with the taunt "bring 'em on" had to go on television Tuesday night to urge Americans not to abandon support for the war that he foolishly started but can't figure out how to win."

Later Herbert uses the Q Word and the I. Word together, in a statement that is likely to be widely quoted:

"The incompetence at the highest levels of government in Washington has undermined the U.S. troops who have fought honorably and bravely in Iraq, which is why the troops are now stuck in a murderous quagmire. If a Democratic administration had conducted a war this incompetently, the Republicans in Congress would be dusting off their impeachment manuals."

Dangerous Incompetence - New York Times

How bad is the Bushitting? The Independent's Patrick Cockburn told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that " [I]t’s a running joke in Iraq, in Baghdad, the number of Iraqi government leaders who are outside the country at any one time. At one moment last year, or this year, rather, a Baghdad newspaper calculated that the entire -- every cabinet minister was outside the country. The president, Jalal Talabani, was saying a couple of months ago that most of Iraq was quiet, but you have to look at where he was saying this: He was saying it in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.

So you just have to get off the plane in Baghdad or look anywhere around the city to realize that this is a place in chaos and this is the most dangerous place in the world. "