"Nobody Fucks Up Better"

That's the new Republican campaign motto.
You want a terror attack? We can do that!


The message of the new bwaaah-hah-hah RNC television ad is supposed to be that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are still out there threatening us, and a vote for Democrats is a sure invitation to terrorists to come back and try it again. That's what it's supposed to be, but that's not how it feels as it plays out. Are we intended to watch the spot showing us Osama directing his minions to "kill the Americans" in 1998, but forget that 3 years later we got the Twin Towers, Shanksville, and the Pentagon, not on Clinton's watch, but Bush's?

Let us revisit those exciting days of yesteryear...

After falling into a deer-in-the-headlights fugue for 12 minutes in front of the kids at Emma T. Booker Elementary School, Bush tells the country:

"We're going to hunt down and find the folks who committed this act. Terrorism against our nation will not stand."

The folks? The folks are back at the old homestead, cooking up a storm for Sunday's potluck. But this is Bush, the Great Mis-Communicator, and by now we've come to expect this kind of tonal flub. The Veep then proceeds to disappear down the rabbit hole, and Bush flies around uselessly in Air Force One like a confused mud wasp while trying to figure out what a real president would do.

Osama bin Laden was suddenly on everyone's radar , and only 6 days after the attacks the gauntlet was thrown:

"Speaking with reporters after a Pentagon briefing on plans to call up reserve troops, Bush offered some of his most blunt language to date when he was asked if he wanted bin Laden dead.

"I want justice," Bush said. "And there's an old poster out West� I recall, that said, 'Wanted, Dead or Alive.'"

Remember how it was "all Osama, all the time" for the next--oh, at least 3 months, until it was time for the Saddam show? And then, in March of the following year, we saw this curious priority reversal:

"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you."

"I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."

"This thing about . . . let's put 100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work."

And then, with need to distract us from the meltdown of Iraq in order to hold onto the throne, it was time to bring him back up on the national screen, which Bush was happy to do at an October 2004 debate:

"Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We're using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden. "

Gosh. Who could have guessed that someone out there in TV Land would have stayed awake during the last 4 years? Do you think anyone has noticed that it's been the Republicans who've had control of all 3 branches of government, had their way completely in matters of national defense and foreign policy, and yet still haven't been able to get the one man who symbolizes terror more than any other? Well, no matter. They can still use him like a boogeyman to scare the little children of America, even if they can't actually, you know, get him.

In fact, this is a gang that never did find "the strategy that will work"...for anything. Yet we're supposed to be grateful that we haven't had another 9/11 since they let the first one happen--even though we've had not one whit of evidence that they have thwarted further attacks--and sit in awe of their clever manipulation of America's enemies despte the fact that they have helped those enemies expand their ranks in ways previously unhoped.

And most important, we're supposed to watch this latest ad blitz, with its whiff of Roviana, this proud parading of one's weaknesses and fuck-ups as if they were one's greatest achievments, and buy the whole lying package: that the very people who allowed terrorism to achieve its greatest victory on our soil, and then made the world even more dangerous for Americans through foreign policy screw-ups that fomented even more hate and vengeance, are the same people whose protection we can't afford to lose.

Scary Halloween Update: As if we didn't have enough evidence of Bush's disingenuous bobbing-and-weaving act, Think Progress has this:

STEPHANOPOULOS: James Baker says that he’s looking for something between “cut and run” and “stay the course.”

BUSH: Well, hey, listen, we’ve never been “stay the course,” George. We have been — we will complete the mission, we will do our job, and help achieve the goal, but we’re constantly adjusting to tactics. Constantly.

Well, hey, listen, that's the problem with being president and people recording your every word, George. Words are harder to kill than mere reputations and infantrymen.

And sometimes...
they come back!!

Bwaah-hah-hah-hah-hah!!!