...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, October 28, 2003
      ( 2:05 PM )
 
A Nation of Idiots

Or so the president must believe. Because if he thought even one of us had a brain in our heads, I don't think he'd give such blatantly untrue and dastardly explanations of things.

Evidently, according to GW this morning at his press conference, he didn't actually say that combat was over after his super duper landing on the aircraft carrier, and it wasn't the white house that put the big sign up on the USS Abraham Lincoln in May that said "Mission Accomplished."

THE PRESIDENT: Nora, I think you ought
to look at my speech. I said, Iraq is a
dangerous place and we've still got hard
work to do, there's still more to be done.
And we had just come off a very successful
military operation. I was there to thank
the troops.

The "Mission Accomplished" sign, of course,
was put up by the members of the USS
Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission
was accomplished. I know it was attributed
some how to some ingenious advance man
from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious,
by the way.

Uh huh. Well, of course it took about two seconds for intrepid bloggers to find the very quotes of him saying that the mission was "accomplished" and also to note that it indeed WAS the white house that set up the entire spectacle, including the big banner.

See all the gory details over at Dkos.

Once again, it looks like it may have been a mistake to let the president speak for himself. While the nation is clearly used to and accepting of his speech foibles, this whole outright-lying thing may not go over as well. The question is whether the press will actually tell the truth of the matter or just let his words rewrite history. One thing is clear: Bush, the administration and the GOP in general are operating from a platform that believes the citizens of this nation are dupes and that we can be taken for a ride without complaint. I hope this isn't true. I hope people start recognizing that their president thinks they're stupid. Maybe if they do, they'll show him up and respond in kind.

UPDATE: Emma over at Notes on the Atrocities has the best breakdown of the press conference I've seen so far. She includes a section on the new jargon introduced by the President (which today included "suiciders" and "actionable intelligence").

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