{"id":199752,"date":"2007-06-29T05:58:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-29T10:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/06\/29\/just-when-i-thought-that-they-could-not-get-any-stupider\/"},"modified":"2007-06-29T05:58:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-29T10:58:00","slug":"just-when-i-thought-that-they-could-not-get-any-stupider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/06\/29\/just-when-i-thought-that-they-could-not-get-any-stupider\/","title":{"rendered":"Just When I Thought That They Could Not Get Any Stupider"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Un-Dirtyword-believable.<\/p>\n<p>This is so stupid, it shocks me, and I though I had become inured to stupidity flowing from Shrub&#8217;s mouth.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-size:130%;\"><a style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153); font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20070628\/ap_on_go_pr_wh\/bush;_ylt=AjUIdmOoouJI6DX_4HZLvhiyFz4D\">Bush cites Israel as model for Iraq<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 3 minutes ago<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">President Bush held up <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Israel<\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"> as a model for defining success in Iraq Thursday, saying the U.S. goal there is not to eliminate attacks but to enable a democracy that can function despite violence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Still, he laid out in some of his plainest terms yet how to define when the U.S. presence in Iraq has achieved its goals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">&#8220;Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy&#8217;s ability to get a car bombing in the evening news,&#8221; he said. &#8220;No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">He suggested <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Israel<\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"> as a model.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">There, Bush said, &#8220;Terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Israel<\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"> is a functioning democracy and it&#8217;s not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that&#8217;s a good indicator of success that we&#8217;re looking for in Iraq.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">It was likely to be controversial \u2014 and possibly even explosive \u2014 for Bush to set out <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Israel<\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"> as a model for a Muslim Middle Eastern nation. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Israel<\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"> has been locked for decades in an intractable dispute with Palestinians in the neighboring occupied territories, a conflict that is viewed as a major recruiting tool for Islamic extremist groups like al-Qaida.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">&#8230;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Un-Dirtyword-believable. This is so stupid, it shocks me, and I though I had become inured to stupidity flowing from Shrub&#8217;s mouth. Bush cites Israel as model for Iraq By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 3 minutes ago President Bush held up Israel as a model for defining success in Iraq Thursday, saying the U.S. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[986,978,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle-east","category-politics","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}