December 21, 2003
The Wisdom Of Tom DeLay
As pontificated on the December 21st episode of Meet The Press.
[Concerning the "situation in Iraq".] "Well, I think it's very exciting."
"Iraq, as the president has said, is a battle in that war on terror, and we're going to fight terrorists whether it be in Israel, or Iraq, or Syria, or Afghanistan, or anywhere in the Philippines; this is a war that we're in." [Got that? Anywhere in the Philippines.]
"Well, first, Tim, I don't accept your premise. The president didn't overemphasize weapons of mass destruction as the only reason to go into Iraq." [As the President himself wondered aloud recently: "What's the difference" whether he had them or not?]
"He was violating UN resolutions for 10, almost 12 years. He violated every agreement that he made after he lost the war in Desert Storm." [Translation: no banned weapons found proves once and for all that he was violating resolutions mandating the destruction of his banned weapons...]
"This was the Clinton administration, who wasn't exactly good on the war on terrorism." [No comment.]
"So everybody knew that we had to have a regime change." ["Everybody", presumably, includes that 90% of the World's population opposed to the war. Does this mean that 90% of the World's people were Saddam apologists? No more so than anybody opposing a hypothetical war for "regime change" in the United States would want to be considered a Bush apologist. George Bush is, after all, a far, far, far greater threat to world peace that Saddam could ever conceive of being. But murdering tens of thousands of a country's people, irradiating its environment for 4.5 Billion years, uprooting it into complete chaos, shooting innocent civilians dead, destroying homes on the "suspicion" that "bad guys" live there, selling off the country's resources to the "liberators"' cronies, & cetera might -- just might -- not be the best way to go about removing a Saddam (or a Bush, or a Sharon, or a Putin, or a Uribe, or a Musharraf...) from office.]
"If we don't find weapons of mass destruction -- and I think we will, and we've already found evidence that not only did he have it, but he violated United Nations resolutions all along the lines, particularly when it comes to weapons instructions. So, you know, we are winning this war on terror." [Do we have a winner for the lost-train-of-thought-slash-non-sequitur-of-the-year award? And, actually, we didn't find any evidence that he had "it". We did, though, hear credible testimony, before the war was initiated, indicating that he'd gotten rid of "it" no later than 1998, while the inspectors tasked with determining the status of Iraq's weapons programmes bitterly denounced the "coalition"'s cutting short of their work in order to begin bombing.]
"I knew that that would be the first thing the Democrats said after we got Saddam Hussein. They said, 'Oh, well, that's good we got Saddam Hussein, but you haven't gotten Osama bin Laden.' What we have gotten is we've destroyed his network. The president took the war to them in Afghanistan." [How embarrassing that the Department of "Homeland Security" raised the "terror-alert" level to "high" more less at the same time DeLay was speaking. Er, and, uh, he may have missed Aschcroft's warning of just a few months ago that, "The potential for us to be hit again is a very real potential," not to mention the warning of Western and Arab intelligence agencies from just a few weeks ago that al-Qaida has "split into dozens of autonomous, hard-to-find 'franchises'." Finally, what the fuck was Tom DeLay doing when he was supposed to be learning English grammar -- out snorting lines with George W., or something?]
"You'd think it would come from the French or their party or from these demonstrators that demonstrate in the streets that you see. But these are supposed to be legitimate people saying some pretty outrageous things, like Wesley Clark." [Straight from the horse's mouth: the French or their party, and the demonstrators demonstrating in the street that you see (and, one assumes, the rest of the 90% of the World opposed to the Bush Doctrine), are "illegitimate". (Though that's not how DeLay's gramatically-challenged sentence would literally decode.)]
"If we left it up to Wesley Clark, Saddam Hussein would still be in place and he'd be paying the families of suicide bombers in Israel." [As it now stands, the American Taxpayer ponies up several billions of dollars a year in support of the Israeli occupation. (Uh, was DeLay mentioning UN resolutions before? No, didn't think so.)]
"But they've gone over the top. I mean, Howard Dean saying that we're not safer because Saddam Hussein is out of office..." [Of course, Hussein's been "out of office" since April. But anyway, damn that Tom Ridge!]
"If we were waiting for permission, we wouldn't be in Afghanistan." [He's right. While 90% of the World's population opposed the war on Iraq, something like 80% opposed the war on Afghanistan. Democracy can be a real bitch, sometimes.]
"Howard Dean just is an extreme extremist." [Maybe that's why Dean is so popular with the kids: he's extremely extreme. Sadly, DeLay did not classify Dennis Kucinich's standing on the extreme-scale.]
"Tax cuts will lower the deficit and bring us to balance. That's how we balance the budget." [No comment. Would make a nice children's song, though: "This is the way we balance the budget / Balance the Budget / Balance the Budget / This is the way we balance the Budget / Early in the morning".]
"You cut taxes so it leaves more money in people's pockets. They save. They invest. The economy grows. And from the economy, the revenues to the government grows. It's history. It's always happened that way." [No examples given.]
"It's how you balance the budget that's important. You know, the Democrats want to balance the budget by raising spending and raising taxes. The Soviet Union had a balanced budget. Well, you can raise taxes until you balance it, but the economy will go into the toilet. We have shown and we have credibility on the economy and the economy's recovering because of Republican policies." [No comment, except that: this motherfucker's meds are either working way too well or not nearly well enough. Maybe there's a puzzle-book logic problem in here somewhere: "Using only his Words of Wisdom displayed below, help Tom DeLay determine his proper dosage."]
Posted by Eddie Tews at December 21, 2003 05:37 PM
Comments
that is a proper analysis of all the republican talking points as eloquently described by one of the leading lights -- Posted by: charles everettt withers on December 23, 2003 10:15 AM
The Bush administrations' explanations of their wars against Iraq have never been persuasive to me. I've always questioned the logic of their arguments and the wisdom of their actions. The United States has always been dogmatic about its need to have military bases in every corner of the globe. The strategic middle east, the perennial flashpoint of east/west conflict has been conspicuously devoid of American bases. America's ally, Israel, is unalterably opposed to having foreign troops stationed on her shores. Israel shuns the perception that she is one of America's "banana republics"and biblical/historical experiences guarantee that Israel will never willingly cede bases to foreign powers. America also realizes that she would alienate all of her Arab/muslim partners if she ever established bases in Israel. To station American troops there would make relationships with even the most moderate Arab and muslim-dominated states problematic. I fully believe the news reports that suggest that when Saddam Hussein informed the U S ambassador that he intended to repatriate Iraq's former provence of Kuwait, his plan was "green-lighted" by the administration's failure to voice any concerns. I believe that first Bush administration may have been seeking a showdown with Saddam; the end result of the conflict was the acquisition of bases on the Arabian peninsula. The presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia is believed to have been the main impetus for Osama bin Laden's attacks upon America, which began in 1991, the year of the first gulf war. Before that time, bin Laden, a mujahadene warrior, had been an ally of the USA in Afghanistan's war against the Soviets. He had no immediate axe to grind against us. The primary target of Islamic extremists are the secularized governments that rule over the muslim world. We should have learned this valuable lesson from the Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1970s. His target was Iran's Shah. The humiliation of the Shah's western ally was serendipitous to Iran's Islamic Revolution, it wasn't the first priority. The koran prophesys that the muslim world will one day be united under an Islamic government. That government is supposed to supplant the power of corrupt "infidel" peoples and offer the non-muslim world Islam or death. True believers of Islam believe that they are duty-bound to assist the world-wide Islamic revolution. Understandably, the secular rulers of muslim peoples have brutally repressed their subjects who are fundamentalists. Look at the recent histories of Iraq, Iran and Algeria, for instance.To support the Islamic revolution would be suicide for any middle eastern government. It is illogical to assume that Saddam could have assisted bin Laden. No proof has surfaced of a bin Laden/Saddam Hussein relationship because it didn't exist. The attacks upon American interests have been traced back to Al Quaeda and its hosts the Afghan Taliban. The war that was prosecuted there had overwhelming international support. I doubt that there has ever been such a coalition of the world's peoples. Every government knew the implications of the terrorist attacks upon the USA. The next logical targets for the war on terrorism were in the Philipines, Malaysia and Indonesia where the governments have long battled extremist muslim guerrillas. The targeting of Iraq by Bush2 has irreparably fragmented the world-wide coalition that coalesced after 9/11/01. It has been reported that the Saudis and Americans have mutually agreed that the U S military bases in Arabia will be closed. The destruction of Iraq's infrastructure guarantees that there will be a need for an occupying force in that country for quite some time to come. The USA therefore continues to have access to military bases in the middle east. What's more is that there are no Saudis there to restrict the usage of these bases. The Saudis and the Turks caused much consternation in U S military and industrial ranks by dictating how their bases could be used in the wars against Iraq. Saddam was complying with the UN on weapons inspections and desperately seeking mediation with the U S. He retained little weaponry to speak of and was hardly a regional threat. He wasn't a supporter of Al Quaeda. The United States has done more to further the causes of the Islamic Revolution than bin Laden ever could. I believe that the actions taken in Iraq has energized the muslim fundamentalists and strengthened their arguments against western imperialist "infidels". -- Posted by: Keith Colquitt on January 19, 2004 05:45 AM