Friday 19th of April 2024
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from the bucket .....

‘George W. Bush has been faulted in some quarters for taking an extended vacation while the Middle East festers. It doesn't much matter; the man running the country is Vice President Dick Cheney.

When historians look back on the multiple assaults on our constitutional system of government in this era, Cheney's unprecedented role will come in for overdue notice. Cheney's shotgun mishap, when he accidentally sprayed his host with birdshot, has gotten more media attention than has his control of the government.

Historically, the vice president's job was to ceremonially preside over the Senate, attend second-tier foreign funerals, and be prepared for the president to die. Students are taught that John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt's first vice president, compared the job to a bucket of warm spit (and historians say spit was not the word the pungent Texan actually used).

Recent vice presidents Walter Mondale and Al Gore were given more authority than most, but there was no doubt that the president was in charge.

Cheney is in a class by himself. The administration's grand strategy and its implementation are the work of Cheney - sometimes Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, sometimes Cheney and political director Karl Rove.’

The Cheney Presidency

Going to war so kids can ride bicycles?

From the New York Times

Shiite Militia Clashes With Iraqi Troops

By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: August 28, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 28 — At least 20 gunmen and 8 civilians were killed when the Iraqi army clashed for hours today with members of a militia loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric, in the southern city of Diwaniya, Iraqi officials said.

In Baghdad, a car bomb killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens at a checkpoint just outside the Interior Ministry’s headquarters.
The American military also announced the deaths of eight American service members in attacks over the past two days.
 The violence — with [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/world/middleeast/28cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1156824000&en=878847851a4960ef&ei=5094&partner=homepage|more than 100 people killed Sunday and today] — comes at a time when Iraqi, American and English officials continue to assert that security in Iraq is improving, and that a civil war here can be averted.

Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the lead spokesman for the United States military, said today that attacks and murders in Baghdad have declined in August thanks to the deployment of about 12,000 additional American and Iraqi troops. He said several neighborhoods that had been searched over the past few weeks under a new security plan were reviving, with stores re-opening, and children riding bicycles in the streets...
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Gus: The present problem in Iraq is a totally US-made mess, one started from having lied to go and violently meddle in someone else's affairs. All one can expect in return in violence... So, things can improve but not thanks to the presence of US troops who compound the problem, even if apparent calm is bestowed when the all mighty US army is present... Until the US administration understand the powerful myths and the strange desires that drive the population of Iraq — the US administration own myth, that promise of "freedom", is but a small wilted carrot in the midst of a ton of other carrots...
Think about it.

blind hubris .....

Yes Gus, but as was demonstrated by the comments of our new ambassadorial representative of the bushit imperium only yesterday, the US will never learn & is doomed to repeat the same mistakes, time & time again, but with the innocents of the world doomed to pay the price of their blind hubris .....