Continuing his shell game with truth, President Bush, in his Oval Office speech tonight, continued to claim that Iraq was tied to 9/11 and that our continued War on Iraq is somehow a part of a war on terror.

Never mind that the "insurgency" in Iraq is overwhelmingly Iraqi. Never mind that those Iraqis would not be fighting us and killing American soldiers if we were not still there. Never mind that the president has yet to offer any definition of victory in Iraq.

He wants to stay. And he wants the rest of us to shut the fuck up until he's decided enough Americans have died to blood his flag of Crusade.

In short, Bush's speech was this: "I will not define what victory is, but only I can declare it so we can go home."

I also noted that Bush talked repeatedly about the sacrifice the men and women of our armed forces are making. And there's no doubting that. They are sacrificing big time -- overextended, under-equipped, and given an undefined mission with no measures for success.

But the entire nation is sacrificing, too. We may not feel it in day-to-day life, except perhaps at the gas pump -- especially those of you driving big gas guzzlers -- but we're paying the price in a rapidly rising budget deficit.

Take a look at the numbers that, as I write this, are spinning in the top right corner of the home page on this website. Those numbers were going down under Clinton. Now they're rising faster than ever before in the history of civilization. Who's lending it to us? China. Saudi Arabia. Does that make you feel secure? What happens when China calls in that note? Now we're in a war of choice -- George W. Bush's choice -- that's costing us not only in the blood and body of our servicemembers, but in the financial burden of every child born into this nation today.

And are we any safer? Packages still fly in our airlines, un-inspected. Shipping containers with millions of tons of freight are brought into our country and hauled by truck and train into the heartland ... un-inspected. Where's the security in that?

Bush feels quite comfortable spying on American citizens. But he won't spy on freight?

And tonight, he offered us more homilies, more sermons, more rationalizations that treat the truth like a pea to be hidden in a shell game.

Merry Christmas, America. You were naughty this year. Santa Bush isn't going to give you any truth.

About author

media girl also blogs at other places.