{"id":1571,"date":"2007-09-12T22:44:29","date_gmt":"2007-09-13T03:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2007\/09\/12\/amateur-hour\/"},"modified":"2007-09-13T10:31:53","modified_gmt":"2007-09-13T15:31:53","slug":"amateur-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2007\/09\/12\/amateur-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"amateur con man…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Bush to Sell Limited Iraq Pullout as Middle Way<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n

When top Democratic leaders visited him at the White House this week, President Bush told them he wanted to “find common ground” on Iraq. But when the president said he planned to “start doing some redeployment,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, cut him off.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

“No you’re not, Mr. President,” Ms. Pelosi interjected. “You’re just going back to the presurge level.”<\/p>\n

The testy exchange, recounted by three people who attended the session or were briefed on it, provides a peek into how Mr. Bush will try to sell Americans on his Iraq strategy when he addresses the nation at 9 p.m. Thursday. With lawmakers openly skeptical of his troop buildup, Mr. Bush will cast his plan for a gradual, limited withdrawal as a way to bring a divided America together — even as he resists demands from those who want him to move much faster. <\/p>\n

The prime-time address will be the eighth by Mr. Bush on Iraq since the invasion in March 2003, the latest iteration of his efforts to sketch what he calls “the way forward.” It will be the first time he has described a plan for troop reductions, a radical departure for a president who has repeatedly defied his critics’ calls to bring the troops home.<\/p>\n

Yet as the president outlines his plan, his critics say he is trying to have it both ways. He is, they say, taking credit for a drawdown that has been envisioned since he first announced the current buildup on Jan. 10 — a withdrawal that had to be carried out unless he was willing to take the politically unpalatable step of extending soldiers’ tours further.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
One thing about President Bush, he’s predictable. He reminds me of the petty criminals I saw in my training. They were obligatory con-artists. They’d work at conning you out of things, even when you made it perfectly clear you were willing to give them what they wanted<\/em>.  It was if they didn’t want to admit that they were the recipient of anything freely given. Bush could simply say that he decided that troops would be needed to continue the progress in Iraq [not that there’s been any]. We’d howl, but at least he would being truthful. But, he is going to spin it as a troop reduction – like it’s what we want. The Iraq Study Group made recommendations Bush ignored. Now he’s saying that going back to those troop levels we were howling about reducing then is responding to our requests and "bipartisan." I guess he thinks we all are idiots. Whatever it is he thinks, this one isn’t going to fly as anything except what it is – a con job. Either he’s passing the buck to the next Administration, or setting up to expand the war as his A.E.I. backers demand. Let’s hope tomorrow’s speech is as stiff and phoney as the one last January, and that it interrupts Prime Time so it will receive as wide a viewership as possible.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bush to Sell Limited Iraq Pullout as Middle Way When top Democratic leaders visited him at the White House this week, President Bush told them he wanted to “find common ground” on Iraq. But when the president said he planned to “start doing some redeployment,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, cut him off. “No you’re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}