Aye Aye Aye!!!

Last night, the 43rd President of the United States George Walker Bush dedicated himself to the perpetuation of an unjust, unreasonable, and unnecessary war. While that sentence was tainted with editorial bias, that's actually what happened. In a speech that ran 18 minutes, Bush announced the withdrawal of the surge from Iraq due to the "success" in the region. Some people have been very polite about the way in which Bush decided to address the country last night. Some people decided to sleep through it. I opted to tape it because I wanted to watch West Virginia take it to Maryland, which they did.

Anyway, when I got around to actually watching the address, Bush made a speech littered with factual inaccuracies and a replacement of the onus from the President current to the President future, burdening whoever becomes the next resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW with the responsibility of ending this war. Also, it seemed to me as if Bush is positing the idea that America is seriously contemplating an attack against Iran in the not-too-distant future. That might be my own paranoia about another war, but it wouldn't surprise me that he would try to sell this non-existent angle.

This attempt to sell a new angle was pretty resounded panned by the media and all onlookers except for the people who actually support Bush, which have to be rarely than a coherent idea from Bush.

Seeing as this speech announced that troops would "return upon success," CNN realized that this is more spin. Rightfully so, they did a compelling look at all of the spin done by the administration with regards to this war. It's a lot more than you think. In addition to the new message, Bush tried to pull the heartstrings with a note from the family of a dead soldier. It suggested that we are fighting a battle between good and evil. While this idea might be true, our prosecution of this war leaves very much to be desired and led to the unnecessary death of their song. Freedom could have been defended without attacking a defenseless, unrelated country. Iraq was not innocent, but it also wasn't a real threat.

To get away from this point, Bush also said that there were 36 countries still with troops on the ground. I heard this and called poppycock. Chris Matthews heard this and called poppycock. Steve Benen supports Matthews and I's poppycock. Difference is that Benen actually knows who is in the Coalition. I could only named Iraq, US, UK, and Australia. Seriously, I have no idea.

As you can pretty much tell, the grand message of the speech last night was that Bush is a huge-ass lame duck. He cannot do anything. The charm is gone. The charisma is gone. The cocksureness has disappeared. Bush is only a shell of the man that he once was. One of the articles that I read made a comparison between Bush and Nixon during the 1960 Presidential Debate against Kennedy, and I'd pretty much agree. Both of them sounded fine in voice, but you could see the terror and discomfort on their faces as they didn't know what to do in the face of the larger issue. As Bush pretty much said in his speech, the ball is now in the Democrat's court. They are posted up at the free throw line. All they have to do is sink it, a simple yet seemingly difficult proposition.