From: John Cuccia 

On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:51:02 -0600, John Cuccia  wrote:

>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/08/AR200701080142
0.html?sub=AR
>Once you know this, you can appreciate what Bush means when he calls
>himself The Decider. It means that evidence, arguments, proof and
>logic cannot be conclusive when, as is often the case, the president
>proceeds on what can be called a matter of faith. I am not referring
>here just to religion -- although surely that is paramount to Bush --
>but to supremely secular matters of state: when to go to war, why go
>to war and when to remain at war. In Bush's mind, the bad guys will
>lose and the good guys will win and Iraq will become a democracy. This
>will happen not because Bush can prove that it will but because nobody
>can prove it won't.

A bit more from the column:

Up against this kind of mentality, the rational man seeks comfort in
fantasy. It was our fantasy that a new Iraqi government, formulated months
ago, would so turn things around that Bush would begin a phased withdrawal.
It was our fantasy that the November congressional elections would make a
difference -- and that Bush would be forced, when he saw the clear
sentiment of the American people, to reverse himself. It was our fantasy
that the report of the Iraq Study Group would compel the president to
rethink everything -- so vast was the panel's expertise, so sound its
reasoning and so comforting its appropriately thinning hair. In fact, so
wasted was its effort. The members were the mullers. Bush was the decider.

And so those who have decided otherwise -- a couple of four-stars, maybe
the chief spook and all those awfully smart people throughout government
and academia -- are ignored and/or are heading out the door. Bush listened
to them when he agreed with them and refused to listen when he did not. A
so-called surge is a-coming, an escalation all decked out with an
Orwellian-sounding name. An edifice built on a wobbly foundation -- a
profound and enduring ignorance of Iraqi society -- will be patched up, but
really, the whole thing is a tear-down. It will collapse no matter what we
do.

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