Bush the Weasel

Yesterday, I lamented at length Bush's failure to stand up for our nation's right to hold Islamofascist enemy combatants in any prison it wishes. (Michelle Malkin provides a comprehensive roundup on same.) I had noted one ray of light for the short term: Rumsfeld's denial that the administration had plans to close Gitmo.

Now, even he has reversed himself. The administration, it seems has huddled and determined that the best way to get out of a "crisis" ultimately brought on by its own vacillations is ... to vacillate some more!

U.S. officials are waiting until Iraqi and Afghan authorities have the ability to deal with dangerous prisoners before handing over detainees from those nations, Rumsfeld said Thursday at a news conference during a NATO defense ministers' meeting.

"Our desire is not to have these people. ... Our goal is to have them in the hands of the countries of origin, for the most part," Rumsfeld said.

The defense secretary said interrogators had gained valuable information from Guantanamo prisoners which had saved lives by helping authorities thwart attacks.

They're hoping that Amnesty will sit down and wait quietly for things to settle down in the Middle East. Yeah. Raving lunatics who shout "gulag" without provocation always have the patience of saints.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Amnesty will neither stop asking for closure nor quit seeking inspections of the prison camp in the meantime. "Oh, in that case, you won't mind us chatting with the prisoners while they wait," I can almost hear them reply.

But wait! There's more! Recall what I said about this whole issue earlier.

Our only consideration in this war should be making our enemy unable to harm us by the quickest, most effective means available. ... Had Bush kept this one objective in the forefront -- both in his own mind and in the minds of the public -- we would neither be pussyfooting around with Iran and North Korea (or Venezuela for that matter) nor would we be distracted by Korans bought at public expense and soiled on government time. And we would not be at the risk of becoming demoralized by any of this nonsense because we'd have our priorities straight.

This was at the end of a post in which I'd asked the question, "[I]f the Bush administration is acting inconsistently by imprisoning the terrorists -- but accommodating their desires for Korans -- are they doing so grossly in any other way?" The answer, of course, is "Yes." Sad to say, but Rumsfeld himself is backing me on this, as witness the cavalier attitude that he displayed today towards that gathering threat in our own back yard, Venezuela; and towards a nation that both aided Iraq before we invaded and is arming Venezuela now, Russia!

Before leaving Brussels, Rumsfeld was posing for a photograph with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov when the Russian jokingly asked him where his Kalashnikov rifle was.

"I must have given it to Venezuela," Rumsfeld replied. The United States has objected to Russia's agreement to sell 100,000 of the assault rifles to Venezuela, with whom U.S. relations have been cool.

Back in 1996, I cast a protest vote for Ross Perot because Bush's father had quit halfway in Iraq and I could not bring myself to vote for Clinton. Because I feared that this Bush might be like his father and I could not bring myself to vote for Gore in 2000, I abstained from voting for any presidential candidate.

But I voted for Bush in 2004, thinking that a Kerry victory would have been an indication that America's will to fight was weak -- an open invitation to more terrorist attacks. I stand by that aspect of my decision. However, I am extremely disappointed in Bush for apparently abandoning this war -- a war for our survival -- halfway through. If his idea in the forward strategy of freedom is that free nations will be peaceful ones, then he must apply that principle consistently. Anything else will cause this strategy to ultimately fail.

Words cannot express how disappointed I am right now. Please prove me wrong, Mr. President.

-- CAV