Eloquent Quotes from Our President

Speaking of faux superheroes, our president, The Decider, has christened himself Commander Guy. At least that sounds a bit more innocuous than The Decider, who I believe was a rejected character from the Legion of Super Villains. ("What's your superpower?" "Eeny, meeny, miney, moe.")

Look, I know the man's no Cicero here, and while he's made more than enough verbal gaffes to support a thriving page-a-day calendar industry, I'm not going to fault him for sounding like he's twelve. I'm sure many of his constituents talk like they're nine. What's worrisome is that Bush actually wants recognition as the guy in charge of our troops in Iraq. Wasn't that supposed to be the responsibility of the war czar, anyway?

I liked the timetable idea, although I think maybe it's misdirected. The terrorists aren't going to just wait for us to pack up and leave, like the right-wing mouthpieces predict; in fact, the terrorists don't seem to be waiting at all. Success for our troops isn't... uh, whatever the hell Commander Guy says it is this week — usually something having to do with fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here, even though they weren't even in Iraq until we showed up. It has to be looked at on a more micro level, at least for now. How about we try to get the Iraqis to go a week without blowing up all that infrastructure we're apparently building and the media isn't reporting on? Let's shoot for a decrease in the violence.

Which is why I don't think the troops can leave: someone has to keep the mess we made from completely imploding, and it doesn't look like any other country is volunteering. I wonder why. But something has to change since our troops are easily eroding what little stability there was in the country — you know, in the five minutes between when Saddam was deposed and when the Iraqis went mad looting his palaces. Here's my idea: we've spent five hundred billion dollars already on this war. There are twenty-seven million Iraqis. (Love the favicon for the CIA's website, too. Screams "professionalism.") That's about $18,500 per Iraqi. So what would've happened if we just gave each Iraqi $18,500 in cash, told them to go buy a flat-screen TV or a hot tub or something, just leave each other the hell alone? They'd all be too busy partying to blow up marketplaces and stuff. Peace!