Training wheels



Last week, Bush told Hill GOPers that the US is going to have to "take the training wheels off" of Iraq and let them govern themselves. This comment (about the only thing of substance he said to his fellow Republicans, according to reports) is pretty condescending thing to say for the cradle of civilization, as Josh Marshall points out. Kerry quipped that maybe the training wheels had already fallen off.

All learning-how-to-ride-a-bicycle-equipment-metaphors aside, tonight's speech by President Bush is critical to stopping the slide of bad news as power transfer dateline looms before us. Maybe Bush will do more than tell us, "the entity to which we are handing power over to" but I doubt it. My first clue: The networks don't think so either, which is why none of them are covering the speech live, only CNN/Fox News/MSNBC.

Now maybe it is because this is the first of 6 speeches, or maybe because it is more of the same rhetoric minus reality. There is a nice piece on Richard Pearle's sweetheart deals in this morning's Post. TIME has a great piece on the master con artist Ahmad Chalabi, who convinced Cheney et al to invade Iraq based on his bogus intel and then give Chalabi over $300M of US tax dollars to have his own private army and possible future government. Turns out, Chalabi sold secrets to the Taliban-lite Mullah's of Iran and is now in jail in Iraq.

So much for the flowers and chocolates welcoming Chalabi predicted to US troops, or the large stockpiles of WMDs, or the gushing oil revenues that would make the reconstruction pay for itself.

Did you know that until the handover, the US is a member of OPEC? Why the hell are gas prices so high, if we are a voting member of the oil cartel? Is it because Bush and fellow oilmen prefer "stability" (ie ever higher prices) over uncertainty? Or do I not understand how the US can participate in OPEC meetings as the representative of Iraq. Someone please explain it to me.