This morning, March 6, Tim Russert asked General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, how the war in Iraq was going. To save space, I will condense his answer into the thought that the war is going swimmingly. Everything is on schedule and soon there will be Iraqi boys fighting the insurgents over there to protect American values over here. There will be no need in the future to send American boys to defend American values in Iraq. The Iraqis will take care of that.
It is my belief that the General was terribly wide of the mark. The best estimates that this old soldier can glean is that a civil war in Iraq is in the making. My advice to all my readers is that if you have got a few bucks to bet, bet them on a civil war. I doubt that any respectable bookie will take a bet to the contrary.
When the United States invaded Iraq, we were told that it was to wipe out those big nests of weapons of mass destruction. When that cause did not fly, we changed it to several other reasons, none of which made much sense. Finally we settled on the thought that we were going to bring democracy to the Middle East. The point here is that nobody in the Middle East was ever really asked whether they preferred democracy to some other form of government. In effect, we were going to impose democracy on them whether they like it or not.
Two elections seemed to upset this attempt at democratizing the Middle East. In the first case, we sponsored in Iraq a secular group of candidates who lost convincingly to the religious candidates. The Shiites simply beat our guys by a factor of five to one. Now in Palestine, there was an election a week or so ago overseen by none other than Jimmy Carter, one of our former presidents. In that case, Hamas, which is called a terrorist organization by the current U.S. administration, simply clobbered the opposition. We and Israel do not like Hamas. The fact that they won this election fairly and squarely is beside the point. Now that they have won the election, we and Israel are going to cut off all aid to the new government of the Hamas organization. It appears to me that we like democratic elections, provided they go our way. When they go against us, we are angry and want to overturn them. This is nothing other than a case of short-sighted American consternation.
Next we come to the new drug bill for senior citizens. You may recall that this bill was not written by legislators, but by the pharmaceutical industry and it specifically forbids any bargaining by the government with the industry on the price of drugs. When the pharmaceutical industry had done its work, they turned it over to Tom DeLay, the House enforcer of rules, to see to it that the bill got passed. DeLay held open the vote on this drug bill for three hours to make sure that he twisted enough arms to get it done. In the end, enough arms were twisted so that the bill passed by a margin of one or two votes.
Since that time, the administration has been telling us how wonderful the drug bill is for those of us who are senior citizens. The high point came when your chief executive and Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Bush, undertook to explain to all of us oldsters why the drug bill was actually to our benefit. Here is what he said:

“Because the –all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those – changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be –or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It’s kind of muddled. Look, there’s a series of things that cause the – like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate –the benefits will rise based upon inflation, supposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those –if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.”

It should be borne in mind that this is not a caricature from Saturday Night Live; it is the official transcript of the remarks. Bush actually said these things and they were recorded by his officials. You may find it hard to believe, but that is the way this man thinks. Perhaps I should say that he does not think before he speaks and the result is obvious.
Finally, we were told by the current administration that basically it was a Christian administration. The President made much of his conversion by Billy Graham and the fact that he was leading a Christian life. If that is so, why then do we have torture in our prisons at Abu Ghraib, at Bagram in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo? There is no doubt whatsoever that we are torturing our prisoners. Kit Bond, the senator from Missouri, calls torture “enhanced interrogation procedures.” “Enhanced” simply means torture. When John McCain, a victim of torture himself in Vietnam, was about to introduce a bill to ban torture of our prisoners, the vice president, Cheney, made several attempts to kill the bill. When it passed, it was signed by the president with the full knowledge that torture would continue. Torture is not a Christian way of doing business. Torture simply guarantees that when our prisoners are taken, they will be tortured also. It is a very short-sighted policy. But in the end, it is interesting to note that an administration that sells itself on Christian values embraces also abject torture among those values.
Well, there you have a few cases that contribute to American consternation. I do not go to bed at night peacefully, knowing that our values will be preserved by Iraqi soldiers. I do not sing the praises of democratic elections in Palestine. And I am going to take Bush’s explanation of the drug bill to my speech teacher in the hope that he might make some sense out of it, and I am going to ask my preacher about torturing prisoners that we hold. I have no hope on any of these counts.
And so you see, we have a terminal case of American consternation. With the current organization in power, I suspect that the consternation will be with us for a long time to come.
E. E. CARR
March 6, 2006
Essay 180
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Kevin’s commentary: Just wow. The only “Bush quotes” that still get commonly thrown around these days are his obvious fuck-ups like “I know how hard it is to put food on your family.” I wish there were more of these transcripts floating around. They are astoundingly poor. Of course, people speak differently than they write, and when your extemporaneous speeches are recorded word-for-word, anyone’s will probably look a little bit silly. But “a little bit silly” is a far cry from “For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table…There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered.”
Amazing. Similarly I had forgotten how uncomfortable the 2006 election of Hamas was for politicans. “You guys! This is NOT how you’re supposed to be using all this awesome freedom that you have” was pretty much the prevailing sentiment. Really I think that the U.S. is just nostalgic for 1950s Iran, where the Americans just got to install somebody. That was smooth sailing for everyone involved, right?