Try this logic on for size

By Gabe Caggiano

With the Dec. 15 elections in Iraq just days away, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and all other major players on the Bush team are workin' really harrrrd still to shore up support for the war effort. The Bush posse rode out of the Crawford ranch after the Thanksgiving holiday with the steely resolve to verbally gun down the evil doers and naysayers with the same kind of conviction Wyatt Earp displayed as he marched towards the OK Corral back when the only WMD you needed was a Colt Peacemaker.

Bush so far has given two speeches in his "Victory in Iraq" campaign and plans two more before the middle of the month. It is the same message over and over, but so what? It's as if the more conviction Bush speaks with, the more credible he is. Bush's poll numbers have crept up a little since his first "Victory for Dummies" speech, so the thinking must be "Let's keep it goin.' America's on the move again. You'd have to be a dummy to not see it or even smell it in the air."

Too cynical, you say? Here's what Dick Cheney said at Fort Drum in upstate New York a few days ago. Decide for yourself what this means: "Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Hussein, we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001 and the terrorists hit us anyway. The reality is the terrorists were at war with our country long before the liberation of Iraq."

Wow. The logic is so skewed and comes at you so fast, it is probably no surprise the troops at the Cheney rally responded with multiple "Hoo-yahs." As if the group-think opinion was "Yeah! Whatever the heck he said, you're darned right, Mr. Vice President! Yeah!"

However, when you see the transcript of the speech, the disconnect between patriotic loyalty and logic is more than alarmingly wide. It is an insult to the good kids in uniform who are being shipped out to get taken out by snipers and suicide bombers and roadside bombs. I've always believed it's a bad sign when unmanned streets kill more soldiers than enemy combatants do, but that's a topic these recruits must face, uh, down the road.

Cheney's persistent attempts to link 9/11 to Iraq four years later are outrageous, infuriating and conjure up the memory of propaganda campaigns of the past by far more evil leaders. It is the strategy of repetition, repetition and repetition. Say it over and over and like a bad rumor or gossip, over time, well, then it must be true.

But the truth is, Mr. Cheney, and for the umpteenth time, Iraq didn't attack us on 9/11. A Saudi-born terrorist leader and 19 other Saudi Arabians did. So what you're saying, Mr. Cheney, if I understand you correctly, is the only pragmatic thing to do was to attack Iraq because lord knows what the Saudi terrorists may have done if we didn't!

I'm only beating this dead horse like a drum because Dick Cheney was beating this dead horse again and again at Fort Drum this week.

There is one other example of the "Words Without Logic/Victory for Dummies" initiative I would like to expose at this time. I asked White House Press Spokesman Scott McCellan at Tuesday's daily briefing what the president thought of Venezuelan President/Lunatic Hugo Chavez sending cheap heating oil to poor people in Massachusetts with the blessing of one of the Bay State's Congressmen. I asked McCellan why ExxonMobil isn't stepping in to do the same given their huge profits lately.

McCellan said, "I think the State Department has spoken about that and I have nothing to add. We need to act on pro-growth policies and move forward to expand refining capacity."

Huh? And that will help poor people how? Let me guess: More profits by Big Oil will help us win the war on terrorism even though we weren't in Iraq on 9/11. Hey, I'm getting it now!

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