The Spurge Seech: Surge This, Bitch

Ok! I've got my beer, my VCR remote, and my scintillating wit. Let's watch us some Bush speech (one day after everyone else).

Minute 1: Oops. Biffed the first line. Inauspicious, no? Reminds me of when he gave the Abu Ghraib speech and couldn't say Abu Ghraib because he'd practiced too many times and choked. And so, for the first of many times this evening, I'll say: Ass!

Minute 1, still: First mention of "our mission". First time I'll ask, what the hell is, or ever was, our mission??

Minute 1 again: He just said that 2006 was the year of our troubles. Because before that it was all going well? Ass!

Minute 2: That's it? That's it?? That's the much-vaunted admission of error? The situation is unacceptable and where mistakes have been made the responsibility rests with me??? Thanks for nothing. First of all, the responsibility clearly doesn't rest with you, or you'd be fucking impeached. And also, how about getting specific about the mistakes?

Minute 2 note: I'm now talking directly to the TV, 'cause I'm already irritated.

Minute 2 note again: W looks tired and scared. And thin. Which makes his ears stick out more. And who gave him that awful haircut?

Minute 3: Failure in Iraq would be bad? Agreed. We all agree on what the outcomes of such a failure would be? Not so much agreed -- actually, nothing more hotly contested.

Minute 3: First mention of Iran. Hmmmm.

Minute 4: First mention of 9/11 and implication of "they'll follow us home". My first use of emesis basin.

Minute 5: Iraqi gov't has put forward aggressive plan to secure the capital. True. They've had one for a long time, really. It's called sectarian warfare.

Minute 5: Error admission: too few troops. New info: too many restrictions on troops. Shadow "we're going after al-Sadr" reference? Maybe.

Minute 6: This will succeed because now we're going to hold cleared areas, for real. Because of the more troops. Didn't we try this over the summer, with no success? Yes we did. In "Operation Together Forward". How I hate the names of these ridiculous campaigns.

Minute 7: Maliki says he won't interfere. Nice way to gloss over the whole "Maliki is owned by al-Sadr" thing. Which is, by the way, an insoluble problem.

Minute 7: If Maliki doesn't follow through he'll lose the support of the American people? Um, what support?

Minute 8: We can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers. Something about that formulation is so juvenile. Who wrote this crappy (and boring) speech?

Minute 8: Ouch! The smoke going up my ass stings mightily! The Iraqi army are going to get their shit together, and then Iraqi civilians will cheer up and build their society back. And it's true, that will happen -- after a giant civil war.

Minute 9: Yay! Benchmarks! Security by November. Oil revenue sharing. Infrastructure (paid for by Iraqis). More elections. Less de-Baathification. And a firm promise that if the benchmarks aren't met, we're going to break out the napalm. Or leave precipitously and take our equipment with us. Wait, neither? We're going to do nothing? Oh. Well, benchmarks are still good, right?

Minute 10: Of course, he's instituting the one idea of the Iraq Study Group that I thought was suicidally stupid: embedding Americans with Iraqi units. Can I get some volunteers?? Anyone?

Minute 12: 4000 US troops to Anbar. That'll do it, I think. Ever seen Anbar on a map, by the way? It's fucking huge.

Minute 12: Iran and Syria. Wait -- Iran and Syria?! We're going to cut off their supply networks. We're going to disrupt their attacks on our forces. Huh? Whoah, whoah, whoah. When did Iran and Syria attack our forces? You know, last week when everyone said the Petraeus appointment was because W wanted a guy who could run an air war so he could shift targets to Iran, I thought it was all conspiracy theorizing. But now I'm not so sure. Yikes! We're invading Iran!!!!

Minute 12 note: Is it a good idea to further convince Iran and Syria that their interests are linked (which they aren't necessarily) by talking about them like siamese twins?

Minute 13: A carrier strike group is going. What's a carrier strike group? Is that part of the 21,500?

Minute 14: We will make allies in the area by scaring the shit out of them.

Minute 15-16: Freedom, terrorists, Condi doing diplomacy. I'm taking a nap.

Minute 17: Victory, still. Iraq will be a democracy that fights terrorists. Honestly, it's just laughable at this point. I realize that for him this is a scaled back and "realist" formulation of our goals; but to everyone else it still sounds like he's on acid.

Minute 18: Ah, pretend bipartisanship. He talked to congress, and decided, upon consideration, to tell them to go fuck themselves.

Minute 18: AAAACK! Lieberman's heading up a working group. The one member of congress mentions by name and it's that assclown. Damn you, Connecticut!!!! Damn you to hell!!! I hope people there who voted for Lieberman have the decency to lie about it.

Minute 19: "The advance of freedom is the calling of our time." Really? I think an end to poverty is the calling of our time. But it hardly matters, since both are totally screwed.

Minute 21: Wait -- where's "May God bless America"? Don't presidents always tell God to bless us? I do believe they do, because it's always irritated me. Now, evidently, God = The Author of Liberty. God wrote a book? Is it any good??