Less Safe, More Killing

Notice how more safe you feel as fewer American soldiers are killed - and we are winning? Oops, I think I got that backwards. Notice how less safe you feel as more Americans are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? Should that be a question? Maybe that should just be a statement. We are less safe and more Americans are being killed. There, that's clear, isn't it?

It's certainly much clearer than anything Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or Scott McClellan or George Bush are saying:

Cheney -- the insurgency is in its "last throes";
Rumsfeld -- it depends on how you define "throe";
McClellan -- we have a "clear strategy"
Bush - __________________ (you fill in the blank)

Did you see the report from the National Academy of Sciences on the terrorist threat to our milk supply?

Have you seen the stories about the resurgence of al-Queda and the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Have you noticed how bad our national intelligence is? Here is a case in point.

You would think that US intelligence would know everything there is to know about the man who is Iran's new President. You would think that had he been involved with the Iranian students who took Americans hostage in 1979 in Tehran, we would know that. You'd think that someone in our intelligence services would have had a picture that could have been shown around of this guy. Here, look at this photo, anyone know him? It's astonishing that it has taken some former hostages to identify him as someone who took them hostage. Stephen Hadley, Bush's National Security Advisor, at a White House Press Briefing, said yesterday that "we are looking into it" and that he doesn't know how long it will take to make a determination about it. What do we know about the new Iranian President? Anything?
After being pressed about what American intelligence knows about the guy, Hadley did admit that we knew he was the mayor of Tehran. Where'd did we learn that? From the China News Agency correspondent in Tehran? Would our intelligence services notice if Osama bin Laden visited Disney World? What are they doing with the billions of dollars to fight terrorism, and just how have they reorganized our intelligence services this long after 9/11?

In response to a question about the shooting down of the American helicopter in Afghanistan and the loss of 17 American soldiers, Hadley actually said this:

"Well, obviously, it is a sad day for -- any loss of life is a sad event for the country and for the President. He and the nation mourns every life. He remains confident that the loss of life was in a good cause in terms of bringing stability and freedom to Afghanistan so that Afghanistan does not again become the kind of haven for terrorists that allowed things like 9/11 to occur. But it's, obviously, a sad day and something -- and obviously, we have condolences for the families of those who have fallen." Does he take diction lessons from Bush?

What was really shocking was that not one reporter at this briefing questioned him about the growing reality of Afghanistan again becoming a "haven for terrorists."

Don't you feel safer?