Brokaw: Are you worried that in the next nine months or so before the election, that one faction in Iraq will try to become dominant, and especially since we have a constitution in Iraq now that says minority rights?
Bush: Yeah.
Brokaw: What happens then?
Bush: You mean if that constitution is laid aside?
Brokaw: Yes.
Bush: I would hope it wouldn’t be. I would hope that the Iraqi citizenry realizes the importance of recognizing the rights of all people within their country.
The Bush Doctrine in a nutshell: Don’t plan for the worst, just hope it doesn’t happen. These guys are nothing if not optimistic. Honestly, at some point I expect to Bush to go on nationwide tv and urge all Americans to get in on the process. “Iraq won’t fall into chaos if you only believe! Say quick that you believe, America! If you believe, clap your hands. Clap your hands, and our mission in Iraq will succeed.”
It seems like there’s room for compromise in our next election. What if we elect Kerry to the presidency so he could formulate and execute a coherent foreign policy, but we retain Bush in a cabinet-level position — the Secretary of Wistfulness, perhaps — so he can continue to fervently hope that things turn out for the best?
Dude, that is how I spelled it.
Given the dizzying array of spelling mistakes on this site, it’s actually rather impressive that you managed to single out one I got right …
“I would hope that the Iraqi citizenry realizes the importance of recognizing the rights of all people within their country.”
I’m surprised he even knew how to form all those words into that sentence considering his methods of not doing so within his own country.
I think that Bush is doing the best thing possible by allowing Iraq to govern themselves. Isn’t the point of turning over leadership so that their country can establish their own laws and rules and try not to base them on a dictator system. I have many doubts but I really can’t see Kerry doing anything better, worse maybe, but not better.
I think that we should have just called it what it was from the beginning. An occupation. Make them a real US territory set up a puppet government and let the rest of the world deal with it. Right now it’s practically the same thing and the worst part is we are damned to be criticized even if things do end up working well. By making them a territory, we would at least have set a precedent, placing the rest of the world at notice.
Bush could be the King of Wishful Thinking.
All together now:
If I don’t listen to the talk of the town
Then maybe I can fool myself..
I’ll get over you.. I know I will
I’ll pretend my ship’s not sinking
And I’ll tell myself I’m over you
’cause I’m the king of wishful thinking
I am the king of wishful thinking
Keep on the sunny side of life…
Doo-Doo, Doo-Doo..
Matthew, Matthew, Matthew. One of the things I love about this site is that it is mostly blissfully free of politics. See, when you step into that arena, it produces long-windedness pretending to be satire. Bush’s hope that once given the reins of their country back, the Iraqis will properly exercise their newfound free will seems in keeping with the constant drumbeat from the left for us to get out of Iraq and leave them to their own devices. Cut him a break, will ya? Bowman rules.
“I would hope that the Iraqi citizenry realizes the importance of recognizing the rights of all people within their country.”
I would post something biting and ironic and pot-calling-the-kettle-blackish here, but I just don’t have the strength.
Oh, and I *still* can’t get over the wall in the face of a stiff headwind.
UsuallyI try to just have the arrows NOSE over the wall , depending on how high it is between 45and 60 degrees @100. .
And just for the record that was not long winded at all.
Long winded is like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville.
I needed a new heel for my shoe, so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days.
So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.
Now, to take the ferry costs a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them.
‘Give me five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say.
Now, where were we? Oh, yeah.
The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.
They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get were those big, yellow ones… ;)
UsuallyI try to just have the arrows NOSE over the wall , depending on how high it is between 45and 60 degrees @100. .
And just for the record that was not long winded at all.
Long winded is like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville.
I needed a new heel for my shoe, so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days.
So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.
Now, to take the ferry costs a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them.
‘Give me five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say.
Now, where were we? Oh, yeah.
The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.
They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get were those big, yellow ones… ;)
Here’s my favorite exchange from that interview. My question is: how do you affect the election without affecting its outcome?
Bush:
And see, these yellow onions, you could only buy them for 5 bucks a dozen. they were quite the sought after commodity. My aunt Bertha used to eat them like apples. Peel one layer of skin off and crunch on it. Made everyone else cry but she seemed immune to those kind of things. Too bad that train hit her a few years back, she was only 30. Did i ever tell you about that one time….
I could not comment on the following quote by clicking somewhere near the post from which it came, so I’ll comment here as it seems appropriate. When writing about your son eating the plastic toy, you wrote:
“Oh well. It’s kind of endearing, watching him endeavor to shove an entire carseat into his mouth with no thought toward what would happen if he succeed. That kind of naive blindness and inability to think about the consequences of his actions gives me hope that, someday, he too will have children.”
I swear that right up until the last two words I thought the end of the sentence would be “president of the United States.” Way to miss a blown opportunity.
And yes, the Bush administration clearly has a collective cognitive dissonance problem. Unfortunately there is a large group of people who either don’t see this, don’t think it is a problem, or think other issues are more important. Anybody have any ideas how to affect the opinions of those people? Matt, think you could ask for suggestions on this topic? I don’t know how many people are commenting on this post anymore, and I would but I don’t blog.
Thanks, and thanks for the many lols.
Bush may have some competition for the position.
On the subject of Iran’s renewed nuclear program:
“I hope it is temporary,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters during a flight to Moscow for a four-day official visit. “I hope Iran will go back to the full suspension they have committed themselves to.”