Setback

Some lowlights from dimbulb's press conference.

From the opening statement:

Over the past three years, I have often addressed the American people to explain developments in Iraq. Some of these developments were encouraging, such as the capture of Saddam Hussein, the elections in which 12 million Iraqis defied the terrorists and voted for a free future, and the demise of the brutal terrorist Zarqawi.

Other developments were not encouraging, such as the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the fact that we did not find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and the continued loss of some of America's finest sons and daughters.

Hmmm. Not finding WMD's was "not encouraging." I think that item makes clear that when he talks about these encouraging and not encouraging things, the only people really encouraged or not are him and his Repug cronies. I can see that having the main reason for his criminal war be demonstrated as a blatant lie would be discouraging to Bush and Cheney, but who else could possibly be discouraged to find out that there were fewer deadly weapons in the world than some suspected?

This month we've lost 93 servicemembers in Iraq; the most since October of 2005.

During roughly the same period, more than 300 Iraqi security personnel have given their lives in battle. Iraqi civilians have suffered unspeakable violence at the hands of the terrorists, insurgents, illegal militias, armed groups and criminals.

In which groups does he include Iraqi "security personnel" and US troops?

Our security at home depends on ensuring that Iraq is an ally in the war on terror and does not become a terrorist haven like Afghanistan under the Taliban.

If this were remotely true, it's another convincing argument that the war should never have been fought. Iraq under Saddam was nothing like Afghanistan under the Taliban--Saddam probably would have killed Zarqawi himself in 2002 if we hadn't been enforcing the "no-fly" zone in northern Iraq, effectively protecting, harboring if you will, Zarqawi there. In many ways, Saddam was an ally in the war on terror, more than the current puppet regime could possibly hope to be.

You gotta love this blame-the-victim excuse:

We overestimated the capability of the civil service in Iraq to continue to provide essential services to the Iraqi people.

Why, they couldn't open the broken valves connected to the bombed out reservoirs under heavy fire; they couldn't repair the transformers bombed by F-15's without the parts kept from them for a decade and a half. Slackers.

And can anybody say that Bush supports the troops after reading these next two sentences, which I'll remind you came from his prepared remarks?

We did not expect the Iraqi army, including the Republican Guard, to melt away in the way that it did in the face of advancing coalition forces.

Despite these early setbacks, some very important progress was made in the midst of an incredibly violent period.

The enemy army "melted away" in the face of coalition forces in the criminal war of choice Bush started--and he considers that to have been a "setback."

If I hadn't already seen a thousand obvious "gotcha" moments, like "bring 'em on," go a-withering, I'd be saying "game, set, and match." Reagan was the teflon pResident; this joker has titanium force shields.

Incredibly, there's much, much more--pretty much everything he says is, at best, nonsense. WIIIAI has, as usual, picked out some choice quotes, or you can just read the whole thing yourself and weep.