Olbermann: Bush's War on logic [VIDEO]

Olbermann does his thing, dissecting the Bush story for its sophisticated spin and dazzling stupidity.... Here's the transcript...

Late-breaking news tonight on why a suspension may not be the final punishment for Don Imus, coming up.

First, stunning words of far greater consequence, spoken amid far less accountability, that are literally life or death for thousands of Americans, not from a radio host, but from a president.

Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, the last time President Bush addressed the American Legion, last August, his remarks kicked off a preelection propaganda campaign so destructive, it ultimately cost his party control of Congress.

When he addressed the American Legion again this morning, Mr. Bush tried to foist blame for his administration having extended tours of duty for thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq onto Democrats in Congress, because they have refused to rubber-stamp his failed plan for that conflict.

What it might cost him this time, perhaps any credibility he has left.

The president‘s remarks at once familiar, while finding new ways to mislead.

We begin tonight with the familiar, the 9/11 drumbeat about...... Iraq, the bread and butter of Bush administration rhetoric, despite report after report that continue to say that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: If we retreat, we‘re to retreat from Iraq, what‘s interesting and different about this war is that the enemy would follow us here, and that‘s why it‘s important to succeed in Iraq.

I made a decision to remove a dictator, a tyrant, who was a threat to the United States, a threat to the free world, and a threat to the Iraqi people, and the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: Does that imply Mr. Bush has done literally nothing else to secure the U.S.? What about the Homeland Security Department he created, or the many civil liberties Americans have sacrificed in the name of purportedly keeping this nation safe from something other than the Bush administration?

As for the alleged threats posed by Saddam‘s Iraq, no-fly zones and sanctions had been containing them, back before the American Legion today, Mr. Bush, trying to contain the PR damage of a military stretched the breaking point by blaming Democrats now using the power of the purse for the Pentagon‘s many woes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: Some of our forces now deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq may need to be extended, because other units are not ready to take their places. In a letter to Congress, the Army chief of staff, Pete Schoomaker, recently warned, “Without approval of the supplemental funds in April, we will be forced to take increasingly draconian measures, which will impact Army readiness and impose hardships on our soldiers and their families.”

Bottom line is this. Congress‘s failure to fund our troops will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. Others could see their loved ones headed back to war sooner than anticipated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: So a lack of funding, which would happen, mind, you, only if the president vetoes that bill, what would be his own decision in doing, lest we forget, would mean troops would have to stay longer in Iraq, despite the purported unavailability of greenbacks to keep them there. By the same token, according to Bush logic, even more troops would have to go to the front even sooner than anticipated, presumably paying their own freight.

It is that kind of logic that got the Bush administration into this predicament in the first place, justifying the invasion, and now the escalation that keeps us there, always a house of cards that collapses upon close inspection. Case in the point, the administration‘s benchmarks for Iraq, that might exist in the abstract, but never seem to be enforced.