The Education/War President Gets Mostly F’s

I just listened to Retired Lt. General William Odom give an interview on Hardball. Since I would not be so pretentious as to speak for the General I will not try to repeat the interview here. I will only suggest that you go to the Hardball site here http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3719710/ and take a look. Hopefully they will put a transcript of the interview on their website. What I want to discuss in this post are the thoughts that I came away from the interview with. I am realizing more with each passing day just how deep the hole is that we call Iraq and just how inept our President is. (At this point I might say just how much I hate speaking of our President in a disparaging manner but I won’t because I don’t.) To use the words of an Officer and Gentleman but using them in regards to our President as opposed to our Vice President, I say, George W. Bush must see the gross errors in judgment he has made "Otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."¹ Unfortunately I believe he must be all three.

The issue of this misguided war was brought into sharp focus today by the release of a report by the 9/11 Commission, now working with funding from private sources. One must bear in mind that we are now over 4 years from the events of 9/11. There were two quotes from the Commission which I believe says it all. First they gave the government "more F's than A's" out of a total of 41 grades measuring the governments progress on security recommendations they issued last year at the three year mark. Then the former Commission Chairman, Thomas Kean, a Republican said "We're frustrated, all of us — frustrated at the lack of urgency in addressing these various problems," What do these statements from this commission say about the Bush administration. We are four years down the road from 9/11 and this commission says that “terrorist will strike again” and this administration receives “more F’s than A’s” on progress toward protecting Americans. If hurricane Katrina didn’t tell us then what will? If this report doesn’t tell us then what will? Tonight Lt. General Odom said we are creating more terrorist in Iraq. He is just one more in a line of real experts to say these very words and yet “Congressman” Duncan Hunter disputes him. Once again a “chicken hawk” is comparing the “war” on terrorism to the “Cold War”. You cannot fight a “war” against an ideology. Don’t they get it? That’s a redundant question, of course they don’t get it or we wouldn’t be where we are today. I want to just say that if we continue to be distracted by Iraq it is at our own peril. We are not focused on fighting terrorism in a meaningful manner and we are not focused on the serious other issues this country is facing. This administration is so blinded by ideology that they cannot focus on the real world.

¹ --Former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson, on why Dick Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults

Those are the Sergeant Majors Thoughts on That.