More is Less

Lately I've been allowing my hankering for political discourse to die down a bit. I have a tendency to wander from interest to interest on a cycle lasting a two to three months on average - hence the gap between my last post and this. However, this won't go away, and it's bringing me back. After going about town "listening" to his own advisers in order to decide how to respond to the election's proof of the unpopularity of his war, Bush has decidered to increase troop levels in Iraq. That's right, increase. Not decrease.

But we've been down that road before:


[credit Lies.com]

That's what a troop increase looks like when you don't know how else to resolve the quagmire.

So how does Bush come by such a ridiculously stupid decision directly in the face of vast national demand to the contrary? Simple. For Dubya, every day is backwards day. Consider:

Immmediately after the Democrat victory, he said that he was willing to cooperate with the left - mere hours before attempting yet again to nominate John Bolton and a slew of rejected judges.

We're winning in Iraq. OK, maybe we're not winning, but we're not losing. And we don't do quagmires.

The White House definitely had conclusive evidence that Saddam had WMD's. (They'd have shown you the conclusive evidence, but it was so important it was classified. Still is.)

Torture? Yes! (But let's redefine that word to mean something else.)

Habeus corpus? No! (Nobody knows what that word means, so we can leave it alone.)

The NSA's wiretap program has oversight. That means it's legal. (Except that it doesn't have judicial oversight, since no warrants are involved. But what's one word - "judicial" - between friends?)

The people of Iraq will greet us as liberators. No? OK, the people of Iran will greet us as liberators.

We're turning the corner. We're turning the corner. We're turning the corner. We're turning the corner.

Rumsfeld isn't going anywhere! Rumsfeld is gone! (This is the "loyalty" president?)

Karl Rove works on policy. (thus proving that politics is policy in this administration). Paul Wolfowitz runs the World Bank. (Since when is he a finance guy? What qualifies him for this?) Nearly all regulatory agencies are run by former special-interest lobbyists of the industries to be regulated. (of which I have already blathered.)

Up is down. Black is white. Right is left. Bad is good. Time after time after time after time, when faced with a clear choice between a sensible option and a horrifically stupid option, Bush does precisely the worst thing imaginable.

This is what the decider does.