"Clear 'em out"

Just in case you were tempted to fall for last night's bipartisanship meme as a sign that the Crawford Caligula's ego is in check, Bob Cesca, on whom you may always rely to cut through the crap and get to what's really going on, points out that in his speech last night, Bush referred to the opposition party as "The Democrat Party", which is the Republican Party/Fox News code for "We don't give a shit what you think". He also notes that the Crawford Caligula isn't as chastened as Timmeh and Brian Williams might want you to believe, because he's using his tough-guy rhetoric again, giving marching orders to the troops he's sending to die in Iraq as if they'd been doing nothing but playing canasta over there for nearly five years:

First, before we get into it, anyone else notice that the president said "Democrat Party" instead of "Democratic Party" even though the written text of his speech read "Democratic Party?" In other words, the president deliberately strayed from his prepared remarks just so he could work in a veiled insult. This is the president who never improvises during his public addresses (gaffes don't count as improv).

It pretty much negated all of his phony-baloney kudos to Speaker Pelosi, as well as his pledge to "cross that aisle" in the spirit of bipartisanship. It was kind of like saying to your wife, "I love those shoes. They make you look way sexy. Yeah. I'll call you from my cell when I leave the Spearmint Rhino. Bye!"

Down to it. Of all the remarks by the president, the one that stuck with me the most was the following:

"We are sending an additional 4,000 United States Marines, with orders to find the terrorists and clear them out."

Finding the terrorists and clearing them out. Right. What's the old maxim? Picking gnat shit out of pepper? This represents the same kind of simplified language the president has employed since the beginning of all of this -- the same sloganeering that shoved us into Iraq without a plan to win and get out. Go in there and get 'em, Private Stretch! That's the plan. No details as to how our soldiers might identify "the terrorists" as opposed to "the non-terrorists." This is the brand of euphemistic, misleading silliness that leads certain Americans (Hannity) to believe that it's still a winnable war: all we need to do is lasso the bunch of them. No reprisals, no collateral damage, no blowback. Clear them out. That's it.