Everyone except the Bush White House is with the terrorists
I get really tired of this "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists" crap. Hell, I got tired of it a few seconds after I first heard it, back in those halcyon days of 2001. But now, five years out from 9/11, it sounds even more absurd, even more backwards, even more close-minded. And, perhaps most important of all, it seems to be used more often, and to describe more and more people.
Just a few days after Bush made his Sept. 11 five-year-anniversary speech, in which he called for unity and bipartisanship, House Majority Leader John Boehner said, "I listen to my Democrat friends, and I wonder if they're more interested in protecting terrorists than in protecting the American people." Nice. So, according to the GOP Congress, Democrats are with the terrorists.
But wait! In a press conference a few days later, after rebellious Republicans such as John McCain and John Warner stated that Bush's demands for secret prisons in which the CIA could torture at will wouldn't fly, George W. Bush said that even the GOP Congress is with the terrorists. To quote the New York Times story's lead paragraph: "President Bush warned at a news conference Friday that the nation’s ability to defend itself would be undermined if rebellious Senate Republicans did not come around to his position on terrorism cases."
So there you go. Democrats, Congressional Republicans ... hell, pretty much everyone except the people at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., are now with the terrorists. Unbelievable.
Another gem from that press conference: The Washington Post quoted George Bush in response to why he wouldn't send troops into Pakistan to get Osama Bin Laden thusly, "First of all, Pakistan is a sovereign nation. In order for us to send thousands of troops into a sovereign nation, we've got to be invited by the government of Pakistan."
Wow. Just ... wow. Anyone remember the Taliban or Saddam Hussein asking us to invade?
Me neither.
I swear, the president just gets more alarmingly bizarre everyday. He appears to have no memory of past deeds -- or past misdeeds, one should say -- and seems to be doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results every time. In psychiatric circles, he would be branded a classic psychotic. But to America at large, he remains the Leader of the Free World -- the wholly demented, Nero-like Leader of the Free World. God have mercy.