Tag: Iraq

Rummy Shows Some TLC

Since Donald Rumsfeld has decided to delight us with his presence again, we’ve decided to do a little Rummy Retrospective featuring some of his more hilarious antics from his tenure as Bush Secretary of Defense.

Remember that time ol’ Rummy spoke coherently and explained the complexities of the Iraq War? Neither do we. But there was the time back in December 2004, when Rummy was on the hot seat after one of his infamous quotes. At the time, soldiers were having to search through dumps for scrap metal so they could augment the inadequate armor they currently had on their vehicles, since you know, they were getting blown up. When a soldier asked why they didn’t have the armor available to protect the soldiers from harm, Rummy said, “It isn’t a matter of money. It isn’t a matter on the part of the army of desire. It’s a matter of production and capability of doing it. As you know, ah, you go to war with the army you have—not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.—You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up…” What a compassionate conservative! Here’s a photo-toon from our January 16, 2005 issue, when Rummy tried to make it up to the troops with some TLC.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shows how much of a 'compassionate conservative' he is by showing some TLC for the troops.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shows how much of a 'compassionate conservative' he is by whipping up a batch of goodies loaded with TLC for the troops.

Rewind: Smells Like Rummy

It’s been like those old halcyon days of the Bush Administration lately. In our last post, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice spoke out against Obama’s foreign policy with Russia. Now, former Secretary of Defense and one of the architects of the debacle known as the Iraq War, Donald Rumsfeld, has crawled out of whatever hole he’s been hiding in and weighed in with his two cents (as if anyone cares.) Good Ol’ Rummy said last week that ‘a trained ape’ would be better at foreign policy than Obama. This from a man who completely clusterf**ked the Iraq War and had to be removed from his post for his  incompetence (or excellence as the Republicans remember it). Here’s an article from our November 13, 2006 edition right after the 2006 elections when the Democrats won the House and Senate.

Rumsfeld Becomes President Of Rumsfeldia

Donald Rumsfeld, fresh from his dismissal as Secretary of Defense last week declared himself President of Rumsfeldia, which is what he calls his residence in Maryland.

“Am I surprised I was dismissed? Not really,” said a candid Rumsfeld from his living room throne. “Am I disappointed? You bet. But as I’ve said before, the President is correct whatever it was he said. Although I wish he hadn’t said what he said he said. Did I just say that? It doesn’t matter. What I mean to say is, sure, this is a setback. Will I recover? I think so, but the future’s not ours to see. Que sera sera! I don’t do predictions. I also don’t do dishes. Joyce, I’ve dirtied my coffee cup. Come clean it; on the double soldier. Where’s my latest issue of People? This Britney Spears divorce intrigues me to no end. She should have got out years ago.”

Rumsfeld’s wife, Joyce, seemed stressed and frazzled about her husband being around the house all the time. “He’s going to drive me nuts. It’s only been a few days, but he’s making me cuckoo bananas. He just sits there in the living room, which we’re supposed to call Command Central, or he rearranges the furniture or reorders the books on the shelves. Yesterday, he was in his bathtub playing naval battle with his model ships. Oy vey!”

Neighbor Fred Dittmeier said while cleaning his barbecue pit, “Don’s a smart guy. He needs to be active all the time. I’ve got a great job for him. He could be a greeter over at the Juggermart in Chevy Chase. He’d be a natural. He’s always got a clever response to questions. Plus he’s a former Secretary of Defense. I mean, what a drawing card! And just think of the classic Rumsfeld quotes he’d be spewing from that post. ‘Of course I know where the garden supplies are; they’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.’ Wouldn’t that be a hoot!”

Rumsfeld daughter Marcy said, “I’m really worried about Dad. Like at dinner the other night, Mom put out the regular dinner plates and Dad questioned why Mom was putting out pottery ware for a Sunday dinner. Mom explained the good china was being cleaned and that this was all that was available. Well Dad was crestfallen. He muttered that you go to dinner with the plates you have not the plates you want or wish you had at a later time. He’s just repeating his old quotes over and over again. Mom’s hair’s already white. It’s gonna start falling out pretty soon.”

When asked about his immediate plans, Rumsfeld mused over the possibilities. “Well I’ll tell you. I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started. It’s like I’ve said before: there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. I’d have to say I fall into that latter category.”

Rumsfeld then started micromanaging his pets. “Fluffy get off the couch. And pick up that hairball. Rover, why do you always have to lick yourself? And you Goldie! Honestly, if you don’t start swimming soon, it’ll be the toilet for you. And you Fido, quit sniffing Rover’s butt! You don’t know where it’s been. Besides, you’re doing it all wrong. Move aside. Must I do everything?”

Oh The Irony

Well guess who’s been speaking up now that Russia has invaded Crimea in the Ukraine? Why it’s a couple of our old buddies from the Bush administration, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice. Dick Cheney, says that we should not take this invasion of a sovereign nation lightly and that no country should be allowed to do that to another country. And Condoleezza Rice echoes those sentiments. Haven’t they done enough for the world already? Of course, as we all learned from those eight fantabulicious years of Dubya and his pals, conservative Republicans are somewhat irony impaired. But hey… Dick Cheney just realizes that war is good business. So if there is the possibility of stoking another cold war and making money off of weaponry or oil, by golly, Dick’s going to be there on the front line ready for the profit taking (see Iraq War). What a Dick!

Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice see no irony in stating that no country like Russia has the right to invade another sovereign country like the Ukraine.
Former members of the Bush Administration and architects of the fiasco called the Iraq War, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice proudly display their irony impairment for all the world to admire.

 

McCain’s Poker Face

Arizona Senator John McCain, the man who gave us Sarah Palin, was caught last week playing online poker on his iPhone. What’s the big deal right? Well, it happened to be during a hearing about military intervention in Syria. But the kicker was that, later in the week, he had the audacity to suggest that Obama could be impeached for putting ‘boots on the ground’ in Syria. This from an ex-military man who has supported not only military intervention in Syria, but bombing Iran (to a Beach Boys tune no less) and the clusterf*ck that was the Iraq War. Talk about your mixed messages. Just think if McCain would’ve gotten into office. We might have our military in four, five or six different countries in the Middle East by now. We’re thinking that maybe it’s time for the good Senator to retire to one of his eight or ten or twenty houses that he owns so he can play online poker full time.

Senator John McCain shows off his only discernible remaining skill: playing online poker.

The Whole System Is Out Of Order

Another one from the “You’ve Got to be Kidding” file. It appears that President Obama’s new idols are the members of the Bush Administration. Recently, it was reported that the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice wants to grant immunity to the Bush Administration for war crimes in Iraq even though the Republicans will no doubt continue to kick the President in the teeth on anything he may want to accomplish. Something is rotten in Washington and in the media (as if we didn’t know already). In the past year, we’ve seen Dubya re-emerge into the public spotlight as an ‘enlightened’ artist, polls that indicate that people are starting to view the Bush presidency favorably, and even that more Republicans in Louisiana are blaming Obama for the sad response to Hurricane Katrina (see previous post), even though it was three and half years before he took office. Not only that, whistleblower Bradley/Chelsea Manning is a criminal for exposing government lies and the Bush Administration is getting a free pass for lying to the public and getting us involved in the clusterf*ck known as the Iraq War. The next thing you know, the Obama Administration will want to go to war with another country in the Middle East because, based on intelligence, they may have weapons of mass destruction. Oh….right….Syria. Didn’t we do this crap already and it ended badly for us? Like a trillion dollars in the hole, bad. Oh well, chalk up another win for the military-industrial complex. War is just good business!

President Obama shows his unrequited love for the Bush Administration.

Romney’s Geography Problem

There were many memorable moments from Monday’s presidential debates. President Obama’s comment about ‘horses and bayonets’ was our personal favorite. But another comment by GOP candidate, Spiff Romney, showed that maybe he’s not ready to be commander-in-chief. He referred to Syria as being “Iran’s route to the sea”. In fact, Iran doesn’t share a border with Syria and has a large coastline bordering the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, which leads to the Arabian Sea and in turn the Indian Ocean. This isn’t the first time he’s made the gaffe either.  Not knowing geography is okay if you’re a college student. But if you’re the leader the largest country in the free world, you need to know the geography of countries and regions, especially those which have a history of being problematic. We here at the Bucket think we know who briefed Romney on world geography.

GOP candidate, Spiff Romney, consults with his geography tutor before the third Presidential debate last Monday.

Rewind: Screwing The Pooch

There’s less than two months left before the election and in the race for the Presidency, President Obama leads in polls over the GOP challenger, Spiff Romney. A couple of days ago, Romney made a huge gaffe as he criticized the Obama administration about sympathizing with the armed militants who stormed the U.S. consulate in Libya in protest over an anti-Islam film and killed ambassador Christopher Stevens. Turns out Romney “shot first and aimed later”, as he was completely clueless about the timeline of the events. It turns out both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama harshly criticized the attacks and Romney looks like a complete doofus. Which reminds us of another doofus, who ran the show from 2001 to 2009.

President Bush puts in a phone call to his father, former President George H.W. Bush, for a little advice on 'presidentin'.

 

RNC 2004: Turning The Corner

Continuing with our RNC 2004 retrospective…

Remember when ol’ Dubya yanked our chain by always saying “We’re turning the corner on…<fill in the blank>”. Whether it was the deficit, the war in Iraq, economic recovery, cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina, coming out of the housing market collapse, etc… We were always turning the corner. America turned the corner so many times we kept going in circles in a downward spiral for the next four years.

President Bush and his wife Laura point toward the corner America is turning. Appearing on stage with Bush are his old friends, the Deficit, the Iraq Occupation, and Environmental Destruction.

Rewind: WMDs Found?

Remember when they found the WMDs responsible for leading America to invade Iraq and start the Iraq War which lasted eight years, cost almost a trillion dollars, and killed (depending on your source) between 100,000 and 1 million people? Oh, that’s right…they never found them. Huh, guess we got taken for a ride by ol’ Dubya and company didn’t we. But surely nothing bad has or will result from it, right?

Oh well, here’s a photo-toon from our October 28, 2006 issue which shows the Bush administration finding the WMDs in a most unexpected place.

Thanks to the recent satellite photos of Mars and the rover, Opportunity, the Bush administration has announced that they have finally found the weapons of mass destruction and that we must invade Mars immediately to spread freedom and democracy to the Martians.

Imperial Force

More retrospective articles from those dark days of debacle called the Bush administration… This article is from our April 11, 2004 issue. The Iraq War had begun to look like a quagmire, but Dubya was staunchly defended his new tenet of American imperialism, the Bush Doctrine. Now, if you look at United States history, American has had imperialistic tendencies ever since the Spanish American War and under both Republican and Democratic administrations. But the Bush Doctrine, which essentially states the U.S. can pre-emptively invade a country if it thinks that country poses a threat, opened up a humongous can of worms, and all possible kinds of unpleasant possibilities of abuse of power and violation of civil liberties. By the way, in case you didn’t know, WMD’s were never found.

Local Man Invokes Bush Doctrine To Invade Neighbors Garage

Jared Dillman, who lives in the Cactus Vista Subdivision, invaded the garage of his neighbor, Tony Kurzbach last Saturday, claiming that he had weapons of mass destruction. Dillman cited the precedence set down by the Bush doctrine, which states that it’s okay to pre-emptively invade a place if there is a concern weapons of mass destruction might be present.

Dillman defended his actions. “Kurzbach came home last Saturday carrying this big box. I didn’t know what was in that box. It could have been a grenade launcher. It could have been anthrax. It could have been a dirty bomb. I didn’t know. But I’ve had my suspicions about Kurzbach. I mean he looks all swarthy and he’s got that unibrow thing going. He could very easily be one of…them.”

Dillman continued. “So he leaves for the night, probably to meet with some terrorists. That was my chance. I picked his lock and rummaged around his garage. I scoured the place, but unfortunately I didn’t find any WMDs. I did find some Heavy Metal CDs, though. That’s audio terrorism! So I took them. Kurzbach sometimes plays his music a little loud on the weekend and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the neighborhood be exposed to Yngwie Malmsteen.”

Kurzbach was livid at the invasion. “First of all, I’m part Italian, part Hungarian, so I’m sorry I’m a little dark and hairy. Second of all, I’m a third generation American who loves this country. I have no intention whatsoever of doing anybody any harm. That ‘box’ was a DVD player I was getting as a gift for my grandmother. That asshole busts into my garage and rips through everything. I think I’m missing my Rob Zombie CDs.”

The police say their hands are tied. “We’d really like to help,” said Officer Ted McGriff as he munched on a Krispy Kreme. “But we’re talking the Bush Doctrine. If it’s good enough for our president, who are we to argue. Besides, who really wants to listen to Whitesnake anymore? They’re so 80’s.”

Neighbors had mixed reactions. Gladys Stephans said, “I don’t think Jared was right, but then again Tony could have had a nuclear bomb. It all turned out for the best because he destroyed those damn CDs. I’ve heard just about enough of Motörhead. That’s definitely a weapon of mass destruction as far as I’m concerned.”

Mildred Dressler said, “I appreciate that I don’t have to put up with any more Ratt while I’m watching Dr. Phil, but Jared probably should apologize for trashing Tony’s garage.”

Dillman scoffed at the notion of apologizing for the intrusion and destruction. “Are you kidding me? We live in the Age of Dubya. I can be arrogant, belligerent, and do anything I want and not apologize for squat. You know. Come to think of it. I saw Mrs. Dressler carry some pretty suspicious grocery bags in from her car the other day. Time to do my patriotic duty!”