I’ve come to expect lies from Bush but sometimes he’ll say something and I can’t help but think oh no, he didn’t.
I happened to read this Newsweek article this morning. It opens with this paragraph in bold type:
Nov. 3 issue — Helmut Doll waits. And waits. Doll, the German site manager for Babcock Power, a subcontractor of Siemens, is hoping for the arrival of Bechtel engineers at the Daura power plant, Baghdad’s largest. U.S. construction giant Bechtel has the prime contract, now worth about $1 billion, for restoring Iraq’s infrastructure. That includes Daura, which should supply one third of the city’s generating capacity but today, six months into the U.S. occupation, is producing only 10 percent. “Nobody is working on the turbine,” explains Doll. “Bechtel only came and took photos. We can’t judge Bechtel’s work progress because they’re not here.” Questioned, Bechtel spokesman Howard Menaker says Iraq’s power has to be viewed as “a holistic system”—generation doesn’t have to come from a particular plant—and in recent weeks Bechtel has sent engineers to the site. He also blames the delay on more stringent—or finicky, depending on your point of view—American standards. Menaker said the Daura turbine is “covered with friable asbestos and is right now a hazardous work site.” The company says it has just completed “a protocol for asbestos abatement.”
So to read Bush blaming recent progress for the rise in violence:
“The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity that’s available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become,” Bush told reporters.
…immediately set off my oh no, he didn’t. If these attacks are in response to 10 percent of Baghdad’s electricity operating, what can we expect at 50, 70, 100%?
The Newsweek article ends on this note:
…perhaps George W. Bush should heed the words of a 13-year-old schoolgirl who attends one of those Bechtel-renovated schools, with new equipment supplied by the U.S. government. “In the old days they would have made me carry a bag with Saddam’s face on it,” she told her uncle, an Iraqi translator. “Now they’re making me carry one with an American flag.” The child resents it, her uncle says. And that should hardly surprise any red-blooded American. The United States wants a free Iraq? Well, then, it should free the Iraqis to do what they can do best.
Maybe someone could pass the message on to George after a Liberating Nations 101 class.