You are the only one who has the courage to tell the truth about our current administration.
  We, the average American need you So much.
  Please, please, keep it up.

No need to juxtapose old and new W statements.  Polls show that 85% of US troops still link Saddam and 9/11.  So do their leaders.

Gen. Tommy Franks, in the March 27, 2006 issue of TIME, defends the US conquest of Iraq, saying:

“America remains very proud of and very thankful to our sons and daughters serving in Iraq and around the world in the cause of freedom. The events of 9/11 taught us a valuable lesson: ignoring terrorism will not make the problem go away.”

See: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174699-2,00.html

Were anyone to confront Franks, or any US soldier or Marine, and say, “Who the ‘f’ do you think you are kidding,” the response would be in emphatic full words, not euphemistic initials.  An obtuse questioner might trigger a very visceral physical reprisal.

The military is not about to believe that the US goes to war for crass or vile motives.  Anything worth the death of their comrades has to rank as a sacred cause.  Call it cognitive dissonance, or what you will, but this linkage of Iraq to War on Terror will be more or less indelible.  If the situation in Iraq stalemates, the collective conscience is likely to become more, not less, prone to accept conspiratorial explanations.  A growing isolationist sentiment should not be confused with pacifism or a drift Left.

Rove, recalling the permanent setbacks to Democrats caused by the de-escalation of military efforts in Korea and Vietnam, knows that there is greater electoral reward for “staying the course.”  For the GOP to prevail in the 2006 and 2008 ballots, a majority vote requires only the sum of the 30% of “lifer” GOP voters, plus 5% or 10% who distrust the available Dem candidates, plus the usual >30% apathetic voter abstention. 

There are some “trip wires” that could swing popular sentiment wildly in W’s favor.  Fear (or the pretext) of a pre-emptive Israeli attack on Iran is only one of the potential crises that may rally people behind the Commander in Chief and strengthen his powers.

Finally, the Dems will assist the GOP with all kinds of feckless flop-flopping, cowardice, and evasion.  In their defense, however, these Dems know that any outright political assault on W will backfire.  It would be perceived as mutiny or disloyalty.  War invariably empowers the executive and incapacitates a loyal opposition.

If the Administration was not trying to make this connection, and continue to foster it, why were sections of the detention facility at Abu Ghraib named after officials and others killed during the WTC attacks? For example, “Camp Ganci”, a sub-unit at Abu Ghraib, was named after fallen NYFD head Ganci.

Why do people carry on about “Bush’s last term”? What respect has he shown for any other part of the Constitution? Another 9/11 and *poof* martial law. Forever. And I couldn’t think of a more deserving group than the people of the US of A, who let it happen.

Great job Keith!! The rally cry for my unit in Vietnam which was coined by our commanding officer, George Patton Jr was “find the bastards, then pile on”!

You helped bring attention to one (lying)“bastard”...there are more so keep it up and “pile on”!

“I think it is unnecessary and just will just provoke the conservatives to prosecute Olberman through the FCC.”

um, wrong. Olbermann is on cable - msnbc. you can cuss and swear all you want on cable - you can show skin and genitalia on cable. the amerikan fundie nazis do not have control over cable - yet.

“Who does the President think he’s F’n kidding?”

Unfortunately he’s kidding most people.  Most people don’t have the education or the information to make heads or tails of anything political.  Most people don’t connect the dots so much as update an impression of someone or something.  This process is not logical but is shaped by emotion and instinct, which unfortunately are prone to easy manipulation, as in the herding of livestock.

So many lies, such stupidity—and so much time left for lying and stupidity.

For whatever it is worth ...

1. Bush is a frontman for a larger organisation. He is too ham-handed to run the show himself. He regurgitates what anybody tells him is a good idea, and sticking to his opinion makes him feel virtuous, even when the opinion he sticks is invalid given evidence or contradictory to what he/others have said. He can only get to this point of bravado by knowing that nothing matters anyway ... his last term in office, he’s done his job for the PNAC (and whoever other folks the tinfoil hat brigade care to argue for) and will be rewarded nicely. But he’s the front-man only, and shielded from consequence.

2. He is also the scapegoat: the spineless Democrats who couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery have completely and resolutely failed the USA (and as the self-appointed global cop America insists on being, has failed the greater majority of the world, and Afghanistan and Iraq especially!!). The Republicans are distancing themselves from Bush’s attack plan and siding with popular sentiment as having seen the “error of [their] ways”. These cowardly and shameful little men have sold the US and the world down a river of pain. The much-lauded exemplar of democracy in America is crippled, corrupt, stagnant, and irrelevant to the body politic and the global zeitgeist. Yet, the US will defend to the death the right to enforce its ideal of “democracy” onto other nations, so that they too can know “freedom”.
3. The US is the ONLY weapon to have used not one but two nuclear weapons against humans - obliterating Hiroshima AND Nagaski. These are true weapons of mass destruction. Now the US has claimed for itself pre-emptive strikes as part of some or other defense against a perceived risk of being attacked some time in the future. It has also successfully bamboozled its way through reclassification processes so that now the US administration can claim the use of bunker busters, mini-nukes as conventional weapons. We now have the US considering the potential risk that Iran is alleged to pose to American safety (or rather, interests), and many commentators are wondering to whether the US will make good their first-strike defense policy.
4. As we are probably all too aware of by now, “terrorism” is a portmanteau word: it carries lots of goodies for whoever uses the term. One is able to do with the tactical use of the word “terrorism” today, what one could do during the Reagan era with the word “drugs”. Back then, the “war on drugs” allowed untold and unaccountable forays into South America on the pretext of protecting our streets from cocaine. Interestingly enough, the flow of drugs onto American streets in terms of the increase in gun crime and addicts escalated. It was probably not all that much about drugs and more about destabilizing regions that did not share a belief in America’s right to its resources, but that would require deeper research to confirm. However, today when the political trigger of “the war on <option here>” is pulled, it is mostly about “terrorism”. What is not being shown is how America is acting more like the terrorist: an illegal occupation of a sovereign land under entirely false pretexts (didn’t Hussain do that with Kuwait?), the use of depleted (but still radioactive) uranium and chemical weapons (WMD?), “shock & awe” near-carpet bombing, using torture and “extraordinary renditions”, etc. All of this doesn’t seem to be reducing terrorism either, just like the war on “drugs” didn’t seem to do much about drugs either, except make it worse.
5. Belittling the man is not going to change the facts before us: America is nigh-on being a pariah state - a vicious bully, deceptive, arrogant, and faintly suicidal. Criticizing Bush is an easy act of dissent: cheap, easy, superfluous. The real challenge lies in finding a way to re-engage meaningfully in political life again, re-vitalize the body politic of America and think creatively and wisely about (a) how to stop the current insanity, (b) how to put wrongs to rights, if possible, and (c) how to live with others in a world with rapidly depleting resources and in an acute state of geo-climatic flux.

We must, we have to, go deeper than Bush the fool. The Fool, throughout history, has always played the mythical role of the jester, the distractor, even crowd control in English and Welsh ritual http://www.mythandimage.com/fool.html . We need to resist following the sleight of hand as played out by Bush ... watch the others, and look at the larger picture: why are the American government so very keen on securing oil-rich regions in a manner that violates every single ideal that America has ever laid claim to (rightly or wrongly)? The PNAC documents are readily available: we know where the neocons are coming from - they make no bones about attaining American “full spectrum dominance” (a chilling turn of phrase for a defender of freedom to make).
This is a mad, all-out dash toward the finishing line of the race - the last push before the end. We just need to figure out what the race is, and proceed from there.

me ... I just hope we have the luxury of time. Good luck all.

5558—hahaha!  To 5564, when it’s that eggregious, and when you already know most of the other media wouldn’t dare comment on it, the use of an abbreviation such as F’N might bring needed attention to his show and to his point.  I applaud him.

I agree with and like to watch Kieth Olbermann. You may want to spell his name correctly and throw in the “L”.

I saw the show yesterday and heard his ‘effn’ kidding quote.  Twice in fact.
I think it is unnecessary and just will just provoke the conservatives to prosecute Olberman through the FCC.  Shoot the messanger.
I never really got the obsession with the word ‘fuck’ and all its conjugations and declinations to be inserted into any sentence to, I guess, express rage. Maybe it is a remnant of a time when the act of fucking was vilified by priests who couldn’t do it.  So in that sense, talking about fucking was an act of civil disobedience and a challege to authority.
Anyway, foul language does help our cause. Let’s leave that to Cheney.

Bush is the pastor, America is the flock.  The pastor, being a man of god, cannot speak a lie for if he did that would mean that god has lied and god cannot lie therefore the pastor cannot lie.  If he contadicts himself, therefore, both statements must be true.  IT’S JUST THAT SIMPLE.  Oh, and if you don’t believe in god then you are both unAmerican and unpatriotic and should have no voice at all.  IT’S JUST THAT SIMPLE.

ok,  that is what Bush says. From the donkey’s mouth.

Then why are we in Iraq?

I must not have it right. I can’t hear the president saying why we are in Iraq…

Can someone please tell me why we are in Iraq?

But you can’t say the word ‘oil’.

No one could have anticitpated the American people were actually listening to the President.

That rocks!  The President thinks the people are too dumb to notice his contradictions, or just doesn’t care.

Bush’s idea of a “mia culpa” for his multi-leveled failures is not to apologize and ask forgiveness, but to claim he’s misunderstood and lie, lie, lie.  The man is a dangerous incompetent and a pathological liar.  That anyone ever trusted and supported this obvious phony nincompoop defies reason.  Keith Obermann is one of the few members of the media who is actually doing what he is supposed to do, which is to keep our politicians honest.  Well done Mr. Obermann!  And thank you.

More Oberman; less Scarborough.  This has been my refrain for several years now.  The corporate media does still have some cojones left after all.

This guy has a real problem and for those who are not aware of it,  the “W” in G W Bush should actually be Wanker!