On a Wing and a Prayer

My guess is that most folks with any degree of concern about the country took a look at the Suskind profile of Bush in The New York Times, and perhaps also saw this from Knight-Ridder--Atrios posted it twice to make sure it reached a wide enough audience:

WASHINGTON - In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration's plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material - and for good reason.

The slide said: "To Be Provided."

You mmight call that the ultimate in faith based initiatives--the administration was dead certain that Iraq would be a cakewalk, to the extent that NO planning was made for the aftermath. Thanks to their dead certainty, death is now a way of life in Mesopotamia.

As for the Suskind profile, I've noticed a number of bloggers have lifted various passages, but no one I've read--yet--seems to have touched on this one:

[Mark McKinnon, longtime media advisor to Bush] started by challenging me. ''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community.

So, the faith based, (presumably) Christian community, according to McKinnon, also carries a fly-over state-sized chip on their shoulder, and is ready to support disaster...well, at least some are. I'd like to tell McKinnon about the large number of Kerry-Edwards signs I see right here in Baton Rouge, which is about as "red state" as it comes. To be sure, Bush has his supporters here--but at a certain point, even some of them can see through the lies--maybe because, while they might not like the elites on the coast, but they don't have much use for empire either, since the only thing they get out of it is a friend or relative horribly maimed, or worse.

At this point, the ONLY thing Bush has in common with the "red state" people is his accent. It might be too late at this point, but the Democrats should challenge his "man of the people" lie--along with all the other lies. Bush is an elite--the Cowboy from Kennebunkport--emphasis on bunk--who reaches for empire without engaging in any of the work that goes into establishing it, much less maintaining it. The entire image is...a lie.