Republican Campaign Strategy Spoiled by Reality and its Well-Known Liberal Bias

"Bush to Declassify Parts of Intelligence Assessment on Iraq"

"President Bush said today he has grudgingly ordered declassification of parts of a leaked intelligence report that concludes that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has fueled Islamic extremism and contributed to the spread of terrorist cells...

"Bush charged at the news conference that political opponents leaked select parts of the National Intelligence Estimate to media organizations last weekend 'to create confusion in the minds of the American people' in the weeks before the Nov. 7 mid-term elections."

The fulcrum of both the national GOP campaign, and of the justification for this presidency, is flatly contradicted by the consensus of all sixteen federal intelligence agencies - clearly, this is just a confusion of the mind. Lie down with some smelling salts and Fox News for a few hours, and you'll feel much better from that confusing brush with "reality". Pay no attention to those facts behind the curtain.

It gets even better. How do we know the invasion of Iraq actually supported rather than exacerbated the "war on terror"?

'"You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq we would see a rosier scenario, with fewer extremists joining the radical movement, requires us to ignore 20 years of experience," Bush said. "We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993."'

Keep in mind, Bush admitted just a couple weeks ago that Iraq had "nothing" to do with 9/11. But now, we had not invaded it prior to those attacks, ergo, because we have invaded, attacks like that will be prevented.

You know, we also had not invaded England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Estonia, Uruguay, Botswana, Bhutan, or Vanuatu when we suffered those attacks. How can we remain safe even though we still leave them uninvaded and unoccupied - just like they were on 9/11?! In fact, some of the 9/11 hijackers had actually studied in Germany, giving that country a closer tie to the attacks than Iraq. How can we leave these other nations dangerously uninvaded?

On the occasion of those prior attacks, we also did not have colonies on Mars, we had not completely eliminated the estate tax and social security, and we still allowed political parties other than the GOP to remain organized in the United States. Yet we persist in not ensuring those differences in some aspect of the world relative to the state of existence prior to 9/11. How can we leave these changes undone, under the inexorable logical force of post hoc ergo propter hoc?

Or could it be that the president is once again insinuating without explicitly claiming that Iraq was behind 9/11, after conceding repeatedly that there is no such link? How else do you explain "We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th... We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993"? Who is "they" here?

Taken with the president's prior explanations, we're supposed to fill in the blank, that the "they" two words away from the word "Iraq", with no mention of other entities, refers to terrorists unconnected with Iraq. But the GOP campaign depends crucially on one sleight-of-hand above all others - conflating Iraq with the defeat of the pre-existing terrorists. So, the president persists in being incapable of discussing national security in the role of the president of the United States, providing leadership on actually defending our country, and instead can only talk in the role of Republican campaigner-in-chief.