The Wrong Signal

"The war on terrorism is not lost, but may be if we stay the Cheney course. I said it here quite a while ago, and that is that it would be the ultimate tragedy if we got rope-a-doped in Iraq, only to be all punched out by the time Iran steps into the ring. If they ever do.

Bush's sycophants say pulling out will send the wrong signal. Every day Bush is president and his policies go unchecked, we send the wrong signal. We tell the world we would rather make our point, a meaningless and destructive point, than be true world leaders."

-actor Alec Baldwin writing on his blog

The Rove/Cheney/Rice/Bush team have continued to perpetuate the myth that Iraq is central to the war on terrorism. Bush has taken to refering to all the factions in Iraq as "terrorists", disregarding the complexity of what is going on there.

Bush and his allies want to express the Iraq War in simple, black-and-white terms, which is often necessary for leaders to get the public to sign on to their plan (though the public no longer seems to be buying this one). All leaders do this: provide simple explanations of complex situations.

The problem this time around as I can see it is that Bush actually thinks it is as simple as the rhetoric he uses.