"The Planet of Unreality"....03-21-2006 Washington Post Op-Ed....

[Media_Lies_Daily]

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/20/AR2006032001417.html>

QUOTE:

This is not good. The people running this country sound convinced that reality is whatever they say it is. And if they've actually strayed into the realm of genuine self-delusion -- if they actually believe the fantasies they're spinning about the bloody mess they've made in Iraq over the past three years -- then things are even worse than I thought.

Here is reality: The Bush administration's handpicked interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, told the BBC on Sunday, "We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. Iraq is in the middle of a crisis. Maybe we have not reached the point of no return yet, but we are moving towards this point. . . . We are in a terrible civil conflict now."

Here is self-delusion: Dick Cheney went on "Face the Nation" a few hours later and said he disagreed with Allawi -- who, by the way, is a tad closer to the action than the quail-hunting veep. There's no civil war, Cheney insisted. Move along, nothing to see here, pay no attention to those suicide bombings and death-squad murders. As an aside, Cheney insisted that his earlier forays into the Twilight Zone -- U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, the insurgency is in its "last throes" -- were "basically accurate and reflect reality."

Maybe on his home planet.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

1. Self-kick.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

2. Kick again.

[Canuckistanian]

3. Brilliant! Some astounding investigative work there, WP!

Breaking: The Administration Has A Problem With Reality

More details as we uncover them....

[phusion]

4. lol

no joke...

Remember this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?ex=1255665600&en=890a96189e162076&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' "

[BlueEyedSon]

5. It is true you can create reality.... or modify the consensual reality

(more specifically).

You just can't do it by SAYING it's so!

[WiseButAngrySara]

6. Bingo! This is PRECISELY the quote that came to my mind when I read

the WaPo excerpt. Didn't one of the 'founding fathers of PNAC' say that? One of Leo Strauss's pupils? Wolfowitz? I still get chills reading this.


''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

[Canuckistanian]

8. I remember

Now almost every left blog proudly flies their "Member of the Reality-based Community" banners.

Did anyone ever identify that "aide"? Was it Allen?

[WiseButAngrySara]

9. I think it was Wolfowitz? n/t

[Nikki Stone 1]

17. This quote is the administration in a nutshell.

And this is the hubris:

"We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' "

The rules of cause and effect don't apply to them, in their humble opinion.

[WiseButAngrySara]

7. K & R. ....n/t

[bryant69]

10. This really is quite a good article

Well worth checking out.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[glitch]

11. Time again for that old joke: the neurotic builds castles in the sky, the

psychotic moves in and the pyschiatrist charges rent.

[Ufomammut]

12. Good article

[pberq]

13. Kick & Nominated - even the WaPo is starting to get it!

[enough]

14. and again

k&r

[KAT119]

15. K&R!

[Bozvotros]

16. They are just getting to this?

Here was a letter I had posted in our local paper more than two months ago....

Welcome to 2006/1984, where war is peace, ignorance is strength, treason is patriotic and Big Brother really is watching. After yet another flurry of stonewalling and easily debunked rationales (lies), the administration finally admitted they circumvented the law and without oversight intercepted millions of phone calls and emails. But it’s OK because THEIR justice department approved it. How would this sound to a judge? “Your honor, I knew my robberies were illegal but mostly I just cased the homes I broke into and my attorney said it’s OK, if I needed the money to protect my family.”

In what bizzaro universe is Bush living? He orders his justice department to immediately investigate the leak that revealed his illegal monitoring of American citizens, but his chief of staff who vindictively leaked the name of a covert agent monitoring WMD's, continues high level clearance. The current head of the justice department, Alberto Gonzales, was one of the chief architects of this Big Brother program and should be recused from anything connected to this. But on Planet Bush that isn't necessary; the foxes there not only guard hen houses they get to design them.

What color is the sun in this world where you can change your reasons for war, like you change TV channels and the clowns responsible for the quagmire are awarded the Medal of Freedom? What kind of reality operates when a war is said to go well despite increased attacks, destruction, death and torture? Perhaps water isn't wet there either. This might explain why amid some of the worst storms and floods in history, the President chose to eat cake, play air guitar and tell the incompetent crony who left New Orleans underwater that he is "doing a heckuva job." Even now with California flooding and Texas burning, Bush is on yet another brush cutting vacation.

Down the rabbit hole of the Bush administration, the Clean Air Act means more pollution, The Healthy Forests Initiative means clear cutting and making the world safe for democracy includes having computer hackable elections, torturing people in secret prisons and listening in on dangerous Quakers.

Certainly they have a different economic system in Bushworld. There, one can blow through 6 trillion in surplus, run up 5 trillion in deficits, lose track of 2 trillion dollars in Pentagon transactions, have a completely stagnant stock market, fund unnecessary andun-winnablee wars, cut taxes on the wealthy and still claim that the economy is recovering. All this makes me wonder if Bush made himself exempt from certain drug laws too.

In his world, Bush can claim to be responsible for the messes he leaves, but pay no price for them. He can make and break laws, lie repeatedly, fail miserably, appoint cronies, crooks and contributors to high office and still count on the Republican Congress to cover his butt. It is said that neurotics build castles in the sky but psychotics live in them.

It’s now Bush’s world. He just lets us in live in it, for now.