Homeric Balderdash

The Republican Presidential debate last week was the pure concentrate form of bluster, obfuscation, and chest thumping notions as only those intimately involved in such a spectacle can provide. Examining the transcript for inaccuracies and homeric like mythologizing is easier than shooting fish in a barrel.

May 3, 2007 California Republican debate transcript

We must assume that these candidates knew their appreciative audience well: a less informed group of people can not be found. Who else could applaud these fantastic tales of war and country.

McCain: "We must win in Iraq. If we withdraw, there will be chaos; there will be genocide; and they will follow us home."

"there will be chaos" - No, there is chaos now, car bombs, revenge killings, generalized fear, you name it, not exactly an orderly situation.

"there will be genocide" - Sorry, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead and millions more are now homeless refugees as a result of the war. The occupation became genocidal over the past years.

"and they will follow us home." - This is a P.R. firm sound bite, invented to scare, without merit, substance, or credible confirmation. In short it is fear mongering.

McCain: "...The war was terribly mismanaged. The war was terribly mismanaged and we now have to fix a lot of the mistakes that were made...."

No, mismanaged is a term used to describe the wayward owner at the local beverage center, not the overseers of a war. The keyword is war.

The war was exceptionally ill conceived, it was wrong from its inception, from the get go. The neo-conservatives were wrong in the early 1990's with their emphasis on militaristic domination and with a blind eye towards diplomacy. Mismanaged is one of those, massage the issue words, insipidly used to mollify the massive inhuman disaster that all wars truly are.

Giuliani: "...Remember, they (the Iranians) looked in Ronald Reagan's eyes, and in two minutes, they released the hostages."

Homer could not have done better. With a capricious and flowery dismissal of the Algiers Accords and the alleged pre-election Reagan manipulations, Giuliani delivers the campfire whopper of the evening. What's next? Reagan swam across the Atlantic, hopped and skipped over to Berlin, huffed and puffed and blew the Berlin Wall down? Does America need a story teller right now or an exceptional leader?

Romney: "...Of course we get Osama bin Laden and track him wherever he has to go, and make sure he pays for the outrage he exacted upon America."

McCain: "...and I will follow him (bin Laden) to the gates of hell."

Tough talk and four years too late from Romney and McCain. That's why the Republican/neo-con/Bush invasion of Iraq which dropped the ball on bin Laden appears to the vast majority of Americans as if the USA invaded Mexico after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

With the Republican fortunes falling through the floor, with Bush's approval in the frigid 20's, its important to hold the Republican candidates' feet to the fire. They can't get away with this hogwash. We have had enough, way more than enough.