Quotes of the Morning: Good Advice

“Ok.. Running a little behind this morning. I guess I’ll take the low-hanging fruit and just give you some of one of Fearless Leader’s speeches. (Thanks to Holden at First Draft for pointing these beauties out.)”
-Skippy

“I believe that 2005 would have been a -- we would have completed a lot of the mission and that would had been training the Iraqis so they would be in the lead, that they would be in a position to uphold the wishes of the 12 million people that voted. In spite of the remarkable progress, 2006 turned out differently than I had anticipated.”
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, January 11, 2007

“So Fearless Leader admits that he can make a mistake.. Interesting.. See if you can spot the exact moment when Fearless Leader realized that he could not remember exactly how many additional troops he was sending to Iraq..”
-Skippy

“And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, Mr. President, it's not going to work until -- unless we support -- provide more troops. And so last night I told the country that I've committed an additional -- a little over 20,000 more troops, five brigades of which will be in Baghdad.”
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, January 11, 2007

“And he is listening to his commanders.. Hmm.. Fearless Leader, would that be these commanders?..”
-Skippy

“Over the past 12 months, as optimism collided with reality, Mr. Bush increasingly found himself uneasy with General Casey’s strategy. And now, as the image of Saddam Hussein at the gallows recedes, Mr. Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that General Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general’s departure from Iraq, according to senior military officials.
General Casey repeatedly argued that his plan offered the best prospect for reducing the perception that the United States remained an occupier — and it was a path he thought matched Mr. Bush’s wishes. Earlier in the year, it had.
But as Baghdad spun further out of control, some of the president’s advisers now say, Mr. Bush grew concerned that General Casey, among others, had become more fixated on withdrawal than victory.”
-New York Times, January 2, 2007

“…that supported you but didn’t give you the results that wanted? Or are you referring to these commanders…”
-Skippy

“Sending 15,000 to 30,000 more troops for a mission of possibly six to eight months is one of the central proposals on the table of the White House policy review to reverse the steady deterioration in Iraq. The option is being discussed as an element in a range of bigger packages, the officials said.
But the Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission and is latching on to the surge idea in part because of limited alternatives, despite warnings about the potential disadvantages for the military, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House review is not public.
The chiefs have taken a firm stand, the sources say, because they believe the strategy review will be the most important decision on Iraq to be made since the March 2003 invasion.”
-Washington Post, December 19, 2006

“The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.”
-Washington Post, December 19, 2006

“You know.. The ones that don’t agree with you and your strategy? How can you be so confident that you know better than your Chief’s of Staff?”
-Skippy

“I understand the consequences of failure; they're not acceptable. And so I thought long and hard how best to succeed. That's what I'm interested in, is success. The American people are interested in success. And I laid out a plan that is our best chance for success.”
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, January 11, 2007

“Um.. ok. Now for the next one notice that Fearless Leader apparently believes that ‘understanding’ is a bad thing.”
-Skippy

“It's important for our citizens to understand that as tempting as it might be, to understand the consequences of leaving before the job is done, radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength.”
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, January 11, 2007

“And there needs to be a bigger presence because, in the past, we would go in with Iraqis and clear a neighborhood of extremists and terrorists, and then there wouldn't be enough troops to hold the neighborhood. So our kids would do a lot of hard work, and insurgents and terrorists and killers would generally not want to engage our troops -- probably a pretty smart decision on their part. But when they did, they would find justice, and then we'd go on to another assignment, and they'd come back in the neighborhood.”
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, January 11, 2007

“Well if they are finding ‘justice’ (a phrase Fearless Leader uses to indicate ‘bad’ people being killed), then apparently we have a zombie problem in Baghdad.”
-Skippy

“The best way to defeat the totalitarian of hate is with an ideology of hope -- an ideology of hate -- excuse me -- with an ideology of hope. It matters whether or not people are resentful in the Middle East.”
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, January 11, 2007

“Oops.”
-Skippy

“They're totalitarians. You do it this way, or else, is their attitude about government. They don't believe in freedoms, like freedom to worship. I, frankly -- well, speaking about religion, these are murderers. They use murder as a tool to achieve their objective. Religious people don't murder. They may claim they're religious, but when you kill an innocent woman, or a child to create a political end, that's not my view of religion.”
-George ‘Dubya’ Bush, January 11, 2007

“Thank you Fearless Leader for once again defining religion for the rest of it. While you are at home tonight why don’t you try Googling ‘crusades’ and see what you find? Yep, religious people don’t murder.. sigh..”
-Skippy