Frank Rich (behind the firewall):
We know what Mr. Bush wants to distract us from this time: Congressional votes against his war policy, the Libby trial, the Pentagon inspector general’s report deploring Douglas Feith’s fictional prewar intelligence, and the new and dire National Intelligence Estimate saying that America is sending troops into the cross-fire of a multifaceted sectarian cataclysm. That same intelligence estimate also says that Iran is “not likely to be a major driver of violence” in Iraq, but no matter. If the president can now whip up a Feith-style smoke screen of innuendo to imply that Iran is the root of all our woes in the war — and give “the enemy” a single recognizable face (Ahmadinejad as the new Saddam) — then, ipso facto, he is not guilty of sending troops into the middle of a shadowy Sunni-Shiite bloodbath after all.
Except, of course, that none of this makes an iota of a difference. We are being governed by madmen. They are madmen that actually seem to have a thirst for blood. Or, if we want to be generous, we can say that they have an inhuman lack of aversion to blood. They make a virtue out of a tolerance for bloodshed. Especially a tolerance for the blood of our young men and women. Again and again they tell us that the very act of blood sacrifice is what is required to appease an angry al-Qaeda. We must pour the blood of our young out on the sands of Iraq like a libation or Usama bin-Laden will not be appeased and will not be deterred. At this point it is nothing less than absurd.
“I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we’ll do is validate the al Qaeda strategy. The al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people, knowing they can’t win in a stand-up fight, try to convince us to throw in the towel and come home and then they win because we quit,” -Dick Cheney February 20, 2007, Japan.
These are not the words of a man. These are the words of a vampire.
