National

Of War and Golf
By Keith Olbermann
MSNBC Countdown

Wednesday 14 May 2008

Transcript:

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on two topics a lot of us had foolishly thought, had naively hoped, we would not again have to address… and a third topic nobody thought a president would ever seriously mention in public unless perhaps he'd just been hit in the head with something and was not in full possession of his faculties - how he expressed his "empathy" to the families of the dead in Iraq - by giving up golf.

The President has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation of an administration - of a public life - dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations.

And he has now applied these poisons to the 2008 presidential election, on behalf of the party at whose center he and Mr. McCain lurk.

Mr. Bush has predicted that the election of a Democratic president could, "eventually lead to another attack on the United States."

This ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong statement came yesterday during an interview with Politico-dot-com and on-line users of Yahoo.

The question was phrased as follows: "If we were to pull out of Iraq next year, what's the worst that could happen, what's the doomsday scenario?"

The President replied: "Doomsday scenario, of course, is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States.

The biggest issue we face is - it's bigger than Iraq - it's this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives."

Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created, includes 'cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives'?'

They are those in, or formerly in, your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.

Through your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives?

'This ideological struggle,' Mr. Bush, is taking place within this country.

It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom - ours and everybody else's - and Americans like you, sir, to whom freedom is just a brand name, just like "Patriot Act" is a brand name or "Protect America" is a brand name.

But wait, there's more.

You also said "Iraq is the place where al Qaeda and other extremists have made their stand - and they will be defeated."

They made no "stand" in Iraq, sir. You allowed them to assemble there!

As certainly as if that were the plan, the borders were left wide open by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of 'they'll greet us as liberators.'

And as certainly as if that were the plan, the inspiration for another generation of terrorists in another country was provided by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of letting the societal infra-structure of Iraq dissolve, to be replaced by an American Vice-Royalty enforced by merciless mercenaries who shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country, by hiding behind your skirts, sir.

Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!

It was a Yahoo user who brought up the second topic upon whose introduction Mr. Bush should have passed, or punted, or gotten up and left the room claiming he heard Dick Cheney calling him.

"Do you feel," asked an ordinary American, "that you were mis-led on Iraq?"

"I feel like - I felt like, there were weapons of mass destruction. You know, "mislead" is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional - I don't think so, I think there was a - not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was."

Flawed.

You, Mr. Bush, and your tragically know-it-all minions, threw out every piece of intelligence that suggested there were no such weapons.

You, Mr. Bush, threw out every person who suggested that the sober, contradictory, reality-based intelligence needed to be listened to, fast.

You, Mr. Bush, are responsible for how "intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment."

You and the sycophants you dredged up and put behind the most important steering wheel in the world propagated palpable nonsense and shoved it down the throat of every intelligence community across the world and punished anybody who didn't agree it was really chicken salad.

And you, Mr. Bush, threw under the bus all of the subsequent critics who bravely stepped forward later to point out just how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy you had embraced, and adopted as this country's policy - in lieu of, say, common sense.

The fiasco of pre-war intelligence, sir, is your fiasco.

You should build a great statue of yourself turning a deaf ear to the warnings of realists, while you are shown embracing the three-card monte dealers like Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

That would be a far more fitting tribute to your legacy, Mr. Bush, than this presidential library you are constructing as a giant fable about your presidency, an edifice you might as claim was built from Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction because there will be just as many of those inside your presidential library as there were inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Of course if there is one over-riding theme to this president's administration it is the utter, always-failing, inability to know when to quit when it is behind.

And so Mr. Bush answered yet another question about this layered, nuanced, wheels-within-wheels garbage heap that constituted his excuse for war.

"And so you feel that you didn't have all the information you should have or the right spin on that information?"

"No, no," replied the President. "I was told by people, that they had weapons of mass destruction…"

People?

What people?

The insane informant "Curveball?"

The Iraqi snake-oil salesman Ahmed Chalabi?

The American snake-oil salesman Dick Cheney?

"I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction, as were members of Congress, who voted for the resolution to get rid of Saddam Hussein. And of course, the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes."

Mr. Bush - you destroyed the evidence that contradicted the resolution you jammed down the Congress's throat, the way you jammed it down the nation's throat.

When required by law to verify that your evidence was accurate, you simply re-submitted it, with phrases amounting to "See, I done proved it," virtually written in the margins in crayon.

You defied patriotic Americans to say "The Emperor has no clothes" - only with the stakes (as you and the mental dwarves in your employ put it) being a "mushroom cloud over an American city."

And as a final crash of self-indulgent nonsense, when the incontrovertible truth of your panoramic and murderous deceit has even begun to cost your political party seemingly perpetual congressional seats in places like North Carolina and - last night - Mississippi, you can actually say with a straight face, sir, that for members of Congress "the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes" - while you greet the political heat and try to run and hide from your presidency - and your legacy - 4,000 of the Americans you were supposed to protect, dead in Iraq, with your only feeble, pathetic answer being, "I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction."

Then came Mr. Bush's final blow to our nation's solar plexus, his last re-opening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgment but his very suitably to remain in office.

"Mr. President," he was asked, "you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?

"Yes," began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans - on our history.

"It really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died, to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as - to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Golf, sir?

Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq?

Do you think these families, Mr. Bush - their lives blighted forever - care about you playing golf?

Do you think, sir, they care about you?

You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed.

Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you gave up golf?

Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you didn't give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.

Sir, to show your solidarity with them - you didn't even give up talking about Iraq - a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?

Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn't give up your presidency?

In your own words - "solidarity as best as I can" - is to stop a game? That is the "best" you can?

4,000 Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice was to give up golf!

Golf.

Not "gulf" - golf.

And still it gets worse.

Because it proves that the President's unendurable sacrifice, his unbearable pain, the suspension of getting to hit a stick with a ball, was not even his own damned idea.

"Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?"

"I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf - I think I was in central Texas - and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it any more to do."

Your one, tone-deaf, arrogant, pathetic, embarrassing gesture, and you didn't even think of it yourself?

The great Bushian sacrifice - an Army private loses a leg, a Marine loses half his skull, four thousand of their brothers and sisters lose their lives, you lose golf… and they have to pull you off the golf course to get you to just do that?

If it's even true…

Apart from your medical files, which dutifully record your torn calf muscle and the knee pain which forced you to give up running at the same time - coincidence, no doubt - the bombing in Baghdad which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello of the U-N… and interrupted your round of golf, was on August 19th, 2003.

Yet there is an Associated Press account of you playing golf as late as Columbus Day of that year - October 13th - nearly two months later.

Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you, six-and-a-half years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people but the war in Iraq is Not. About. You.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about what your addled brain has produced in the way of paranoid delusions of risks that do not exist, ready to be activated if some Democrat, and not your twin Mr. McCain succeeds you.

The war in Iraq - your war, Mr. Bush - is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths - for nothing.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game!

And, sir, if you have any hopes that next January 20th will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heart-felt Thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice:

When somebody asks you, sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at…

When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation…

When somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead…

This advice, Mr. Bush…

Shut the hell up!

Found on the net: A right wing talk radio host appears on Hardball to defend Bush. He turns out to be a moron.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1wSZBTAXRs

Comment from a writer:

Seriously, though, it's not like this reflects very well on Chris Matthews, either. Why is he inviting such an obnoxious moron onto his show? There are plenty of people who could represent the conservative position here with some intelligence and class. Why not try to schedule them? Matthews clearly has some coherent views about diplomacy--it would be far more useful to have a debate with someone capable of responding cogently. It's certainly fun to watch this guy twist in the wind, but in the end it doesn't enlighten or enrich the public discourse at all.

Exactly.

The filthy republicans used to say that President Clinton was a traitor because, as a college student, he protested the American War against Vietnam in Great Britian. Now, Bush, for the first time in history, has criticized a US presidental candidate before the legislature of a foreign country. And, the filthy republicans claim this is business as usual. Details here:


Chris Matthews Eviscerates Right-Wing Host Kevin James Over Obama "Appeasement" Claims
May 15, 2008 06:27 PM

Utterly insane goings-on tonight on Hardball, where, for the second night in a row, the "Hardball Sideshow" segment was preceded by a scene that way outfreaked it. Tonight, host Chris Matthews took up President Bush's pointed attack on the Democrats in the Knesset today, asking if Bush was "out of line." Radio talk-show host Kevin James didn't think so, saying - and I'm paraphrasing - "RRRRAAAAAHHHH! OBAMA BLAAAAHHHH! HAMAS LOVES BARACK, YAAAAHHHH!" Chris Matthews was quick to ask, "Why are you screaming?"

But the best was yet to come. Matthews, convinced that James was being a fatuous ass, called him out on his knowledge of geo-political history, asking James if he knew what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich in 1938. If you answered, "He signed the Munich Agreement, conceding a portion of Czechoslovakia to the Nazi regime," you are right. If you answered, "He talked to Hitler, and caused 9/11 to happen and made the Statue of Liberty cry, just like Barack Hussein bin Laden wants to!" then you are Kevin James.

The ensuing melee is just far to shouty and unhinged to transcribe. Basically it ran like this, over and over again:

MATTHEWS: WHAT DID NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN DO? WHAT DID HE DO? YOU DON"T KNOW WHAT HE DID, DO YOU?

JAMES: WUBBA WUBBA HUH?

Until finally, James conceded, sort of, that he didn't know. Matthews replied: "Your problem, is, Kevin, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't understand there's a difference between talking to the enemy and appeasing. What Chamberlain did wrong was not talking to Hitler, but giving half of Czechoslovakia." He then growled, "This is pathetic," tossed it to Air America's Mark Green, who told James, "Kevin, when you're in a hole, stop digging."

The positive spin is that this actually helps Obama because McCain didn't bother to distance himself from the Bush spew and piled on with his own example of an appeaser, Nevil Chamberlain. Both examples, Bush's and McCain's were conservatives.

The third Bush term is becoming concrete to everyone and the smart Republicans are seeing the impending trainwreck with a loss of as many as 70 house seats and a similar portion of the Senate over time.

The faces of those panned in the Knesset seemed impassive. I saw no sparkle of agreement with Bush's comments. He is the current candyman and so they were politely silent. They know he won't be around soon but may not be sure who his replacement will be.

I wonder if Kevin James knows that Bushs grandfather for a time was Hitlers banker? When I see young men with attitudes like him I think why isn't he in Iraq fighting for freedom and democracy and then I realize he probably wants to be a politician.

I was listening to Rachel Maddow yesterday and she said that Bush's interview with Politico had that golf question as a set up for Bush. They obviously had talked about it before the interview. I mean, if you were a reporter, talking to the President, the LAST question you would ask is, "Why are you no longer playing golf, did that have anything to do with Iraq?"

The best part, Bush answered it.. as if it really makes a difference. He gave up golf! What a sacrifice.

Let's see...my son (or daughter) or golf? Which is more of a sacrifice HMMMMMMMMM What a choice because I really love my gae of golf.

The point made by Keith Olbermann was that Bush actually didn't give up golf. He ran dated footage of him playing 2 months after the event that he described as seminal to his decision to do the best he could to show solidarity with the families of the dead US military members. Apparetnly Bush's best is to lie and keep on playing.

In Golf, that is known as a "bad lie"

Blurred Vision
Bush's blundering brand of "diplomacy."
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, May 16, 2008, at 5:52 PM ET

Much outrage has been vented over President George W. Bush's May 15 address to the Knesset, where he likened negotiating with Iran or Hamas to appeasing Nazi Germany. His remarks were mendacious in many ways, not only as a dishonest attack on Barack Obama.

But the controversy has distracted attention from another passage in the speech, which highlights a more serious matter—the scandalous inadequacy of this president's foreign policy, the glaring gap between his rhetoric and his behavior, the startling inattention to diplomatic strategy and tactics.

Bush, of course, was speaking on the occasion of Israel's 60th anniversary, and toward the end of his speech, he laid out a vision of the Middle East as it might exist 60 years in the future:

Israel will be celebrating the 120th anniversary as one of the world's great democracies, a secure and flourishing homeland for the Jewish people. The Palestinian people will have the homeland they have long dreamed of and deserved—a democratic state that is governed by law, and respects human rights, and rejects terror. From Cairo to Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies. … Iran and Syria will be peaceful nations. … Al-Qaida and Hezbollah and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause.

"This is a bold vision," Bush continued, somewhat immodestly. And indeed it is. One can imagine the president or his speechwriters admiring their handiwork as a Holy Land adaptation of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. But King was also a man of action; he had a plan for how to get to his mountaintop. What is Bush's plan? What needs to happen as a precondition for progress? What action is he taking now, what steps does he pledge or propose for the next few months or years to get the caravan rolling in the right direction?

On these matters, he has said little and done less. "Some will say it can never be achieved," he said of his vision. But, he added, 60 years ago, few could imagine a free and peaceful Europe or a friendly, democratic Japan. Yet those transformations took place. "And a future of transformation is possible in the Middle East," he said, "so long as a new generation of leaders has the courage to defeat the enemies of freedom, to make the hard choices necessary for peace, and stand firm on the solid rock of universal values."

This only begs further questions. Which "enemies of freedom" is he talking about? (All of them?) Who will "defeat" them, and how? What "hard choices," and whose? He appears to absolve the Israelis of the need to make any. In recent weeks, he and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have said they would still like to hammer out an Israeli-Palestinian accord before they leave office. But in the Knesset, he suggested such a peace might not fall into place for another 60 years, long after everyone in the room has passed on. No deadline pressure here.

If he wanted to be truly bold, he might have proposed the accomplishment of his vision by Israel's 70th anniversary, a mere (and foreseeable) decade hence, as John F. Kennedy did with the moon walk. That, too, would have been over the top, but at least it would have been seen as a call for action to be taken now by the living. But President Bush chose not to be so daring even in his rhetoric.

This tendency—his failure to devise tangible goals or carve out a path to meet them—was on display again Friday in Riyadh, where Bush had flown to celebrate the 75th anniversary of formal relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Bush met privately with King Abdullah to plead for expanded oil production and thus lower gas prices. The king brusquely turned him down, just as he turned down a similar request from Bush last January.

Later in the day, the Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, twisted the knife a few notches further by saying, at a press conference, that his government had already increased production by 20 percent—then added that this move was in response to requests from some 50 customers all over the world, not just from Bush. (In other words, he went out of his way to avoid giving even the impression of doing the United States a favor.)

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, took another poke at Bush. "The president showed great concern for the impact on the American economy," the prince told the press corps. "We of course sympathize with that." Period. The end.

So humiliating—and after the White House press secretary, Dana Perino, had alerted reporters on Air Force One that the president would be asking for just such a favor. "Clearly, the price of gas is too high for Americans, and it is causing a hardship for families with low income," Perino said. "We do count on the OPEC countries to keep adequate supplies out there, so the president will talk with the king about that."

What is going on? It's bizarre that Bush should expect the Saudis to sacrifice their economic interests for the sake of doing him a favor. It is no less odd that Bush, through Perino, would publicly announce his plea in advance, thus setting himself up for humiliation. Finally, on a point that goes beyond political blundering to national policy, it is damningly revealing for Perino to say that we "count on the OPEC countries" to maintain adequate oil supplies. Maybe, in the name of sovereignty and for the sake of our vital interests, Bush should be taking the initiative, doing something on his own to bring oil prices down—for instance, devising a national energy policy that offers incentives, or sets mandates, to reduce demand.

We see a pattern. In the Knesset, Bush wove a vision of a transformed Middle East without any notion of how to get there. Similarly, if less grandly, in Saudi Arabia, Bush asked the king for a break on oil prices, without any notion of why his wish should be granted or of what favors to grant the king in exchange.

In both countries, Bush displayed no feel for diplomacy, no concept of what it entails, no sense of how to harness power into influence or assets into leverage. He thus not only comes away with nothing but leaves the world with the impression that we have even less power and leverage than we do.

Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.

And what else should we expect from an administration that appoints Condi Rice as Secretary of State? The world views the US with the perception of the silly choices we allowed to be made. Obama has his work cut out for him.

and what about the stupid statement hucabee(sp) made at the NRA convention about the noise you just heard was obama ducking from the sound of gunshots? they are all a bunch of asswipes, god bless barrack obama and bring on the debates with old man mccain

It seems more and more that GWTwig is hitting the bottle.

No he did that sufficiently to kill what braincells he had long ago. You are seeing a shadow of his former drunken self.

That Hardball video is hysterical. I find it interesting that when directly questioned about statements the Republican point of view seems to fall apart. I can't wait until the Presidential debates!