Yep, it’s all a joke:
Minutes after the Iraq Study Group placed an improvised explosive device beneath the Bush administration’s Iraq policy yesterday, panel member Lawrence Eagleburger was asked how President Bush reacted to the recommendations.
“His reaction was, ‘Where’s my drink?’ ” the former secretary of state cracked after the commission’s White House visit and Capitol Hill news conference. Reaching for his own cola, Eagleburger continued: “He was a little loaded. It was early in the morning, too, you know.”
I wonder if the families of everyone who has died or been maimed or lost their homes in the Iraq disaster found that funny. But here’s the money quote from that article:
…The retired diplomat certainly did not mean that the president had fallen off the wagon. But if any event would call for a stiff one, this was it: A bipartisan group of elder statesmen — some of them friends of Bush’s father, no less — had just concluded that the Iraq war, the centerpiece of Bush’s presidency, was a disaster with no easy way out.
But not to worry. Bush won’t let a pesky little thing like reality interfere with his delusions:
President Bush yesterday argued against key recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and insisted that victory was not only still possible, but crucial.
Bush, standing side by side with his staunchest ally in the Iraq war, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, said the two countries must stand firm in the face of rising extremism in the Middle East, which he called an “unprecedented threat to civilization.”
Bush used the word “prevail” 11 times in the hour-long White House press conference in his first expansive remarks since the Iraq Study Group offered a devastating assessment Wednesday of US policy in Iraq.
“I believe we’ll prevail,” he said. “I understand how hard it is to prevail. But I also want the American people to understand that if we were to fail . . . that failed policy will come to hurt generations of Americans in the future.”
Too bad the Decider couldn’t have understood the consequences of failure before he invaded Iraq. Too bad Poppy’s been bailing him out his whole life. We might not be where we are now. But hey, W’s used to failure…it’s what he knows best.
