Debunking the Myth that Bush is a strong leader

Will you get it through your flag-waving skulls: Bush, his advisors and his administration, while on a neoconservative mission to make the world "safer" totally and completely failed to plan for a contingency that even Tom Friedman (an Iraq war supporter) warned about: Iraq is not a centralized, unified country: it is like a Yugoslavia - a group of not particularly friendly-to-each other ethnic groups, tribes, and sects that were stopped from killing each other by a ruthless totalitarian dictator. Also: since we're fighting what's been called a global war on islamist/islamofascist terrorism, why did we put over 100,000 American troops smack dab in the middle of Iraq and fail to seal the borders? That grave error, that costly, unnecessary, and deadly error is a key reason why our men and women in Iraq, and the Iraqi national guard are sitting ducks. It's a chief reason why Westerners are getting kidnapped and beheaded. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Jerry Bremer said that the chief post-war problem in Iraq was that he didn't have enough troops. After that statement was publicized, the Bushies forced him to retract it on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times, which he did. Remember Jay Garner? Bremer's predecessor? Surprise, surprise. Guess what he's got to say in today's New York Times: 'I think that there were Baathist Sunnis who planned to resist no matter what happened and at all cost, but we missed opportunities, and that drove more of them into the resistance,' Jay Garner, the first civilian administrator of Iraq and a retired Army lieutenant general, said in an interview, referring to the Baath Party of Mr. Hussein and to his Sunni Muslim supporters. 'Things were stirred up far more than they should have been. We did not seal the borders because we did not have enough troops to do that, and that brought in terrorists.'" and: Looking back at that crucial time, those officers, administration officials and others provided an intimate and detailed account of how the postwar situation went awry. Civilian administrators of the Iraqi occupation raised concerns about plans to reduce American forces; intelligence agencies left American forces unprepared for the furious battles they encountered in Iraq's southern cities and did not emphasize the risks of a postwar insurgency. And senior American generals and civilians were at odds over plans to build a new Iraqi army, which was needed to impose order. It's quite a long article. It's quite a factual, undisputed indictment on the Bush administration's abysmal handling of Iraq, and just how inept, incompetent and wrong-headed they are. What's even scarier is that Bush never, ever changes his mind once he's made it up. They'll change the facts to back up that decision, instead. He never "flip flops" by changing strategies once the situation changes. Why? Because he is doing God's will, and what Jesus would do is apparently paramount, exceeding American lives in importance to this "Commander-in-Chief."