A Reality-Check for the Bush Zombies.
By Brad Friedman on 3/12/2005, 1:16pm PT  

It's always worth taking notice whenever we find ourselves in agreement with actual Conservative, Pat Buchanan (as opposed to those fake Conservatives who make up the bulk of the Bushville Faction, the great majority of whom haven't a clue what the word "Conservative" actually means).

Yes, he's also a bigot. But Buchanan has been a correct and vocal critic against Bush's War on Iraq in the past, and this week in his American Conservative magazine, he provides a smart antidote to the knee-jerk series of pro-Bush P.R. articles we've seen over the past week or so from the supposedly "Liberal" media. Of course, those folks couldn't wait more than an hour after a single Anti-Syria demonstration last week in Lebanon to declare "Bush was right!" (Yes, Newsweek, we're talking to you...you might have waited an hour or so for the even bigger Pro-Syria, Anti-America demonstrations that followed just a minute or so later before slobbering all over the Bush administration to demonstrate your we're-not-the-Liberal-media creds in your absurd coverpage splash this week.)

Anway...Buchanan provides a Reality Check on the State of the Empire to counter-balance the administration's effective P.R. work aided and abetted by that not-so-Liberal-after-all media over the past week. Here's the money...and the reality which doesn't get nearly the amount of Newsweek Cover time...

Our NATO allies, Tony Blair included, are lifting their embargo on weapons sales to China over the protests of President Bush. Old Europe remains adamant in its refusal to send troops to Iraq, as the Ukrainians and Poles, following the Spanish, quietly depart the beleaguered nation.

Germany, France, and Britain are negotiating a deal by which Iran, if she will submit to regular IAEA inspections, will be permitted to enrich uranium for nuclear power, be granted security guarantees, and be brought into the WTO. America opposes the three allies' concessions, but there is no NATO support for U.S. military action. Should Bush exercise that option, America will be alone in fighting insurgents from the eastern border of Syria to the western border of Pakistan. U.S. generals are advising the president that his legions are already stretched thin.

The Iraqi elections appear to have deposed our client Allawi and empowered Shia parties with ties to Iran and Kurds who covet Kirkuk and its oil and look to ultimate independence.

This has the Turks grumbling as well as the dispossessed Sunnis, among whom the newly reignited insurgency first arose. Whatever the neocons' vision of Iraq—as strategic base camp for World War IV or crown jewel of Middle East empire—Americans seem to be looking for an exit.

As for the Bush Doctrine—no axis-of-evil nation will be allowed to acquire weapons of mass destruction—it is being tested by Tehran and defied by Kim Jong Il, who has crossed every red line Bush has put down and now claims to have nuclear weapons. America's response? Please come back to the six-power talks.

Russia's Putin is consolidating power in the czarist tradition, seeking to resurrect Moscow's old sphere of influence, and is conducting military exercises jointly with Beijing.

And openly contemptuous China lectures us on our failure to rein in our voracious appetite for imports, which is sending the dollar the way of the peso. Beijing refuses to pressure North Korea to terminate its nuclear-weapons program, permits Pyongyang to use Chinese territory to transship missiles and nuclear materiel, and spends a goodly slice of its $160 billion trade surplus with America to build up air, naval, and missile forces for the showdown with Taiwan.

Other than that...how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

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