Gotta love those tyrants

When our president speaks, two things are obvious.

One, he thinks we don't really see the irony in his words.

Two, he thinks the American people are ignorant and apathetic.

Well, he may be right on the second count, or who could explain our inability to rise up and remove him from office.

Yesterday, he spoke about his good friend, the Pakistan dictator Pervez Musharaff, with my interlinear comments:

I take a person for his word until otherwise (such and honorable deal, but one not offered to another former friend, Saddam Hussein) I think that's what you have to do. When somebody says this is what they're going to do, then you give them a chance to do it. I can tell you this, that President Musharraf, right after the attacks on September the 11th, made a decision, and the decision was to stand with the United States against the extremists inside Pakistan. In other words, he was given an option:(In other words, he was handed an ultimatum, like every other country in the world - it's why we're so popular abroad today) Are you with us, or are you not with us? And he made a clear decision to be with us, and he's acted on that advice.

I want to remind you that if you're the chief operating officer of al Qaeda (al Qaeda Inc., that is. In fact if al Qaeda were a business which contributed to the Bush campaign, they may have gotten a no-bid contract to say, build schools and hospitals in Iraq, that they wouldn't even have to build in order to be paid!) you haven't had a good experience. There has been four or five number threes that have been brought to justice one way or the other ("Justice" in that Wyatt Earp kind of way, you know, shoot them in the head, and make pronouncements later about how vital they had been to al Qaeuda, and how dead they are now). And many of those folks thought they could find safe haven in Pakistan (wait, isn't Osama bin Laden still hiding somewhere in Pakistan?). And that would not have happened without President Musharraf honoring his word (was that the "word" about allowing elections, promoting democracy, or stifling dissent?).

He fully understands the dangers of al Qaeda. Benazir Bhutto fully understands the dangers of al Qaeda. By far, the vast majority of people in Pakistan want to live in a free and peaceful society (especially the lawyers and dissidents who are now in jail), and they understand the dangers of al Qaeda, because al Qaeda is a group of ideologues who murder innocent people to achieve their political objectives (and the United States, which bombs, and shoots innocent Iraquis - collateral damage - in the name of "democracy," are we not "idealogues?")

And so I believe that we will continue to have good collaboration with the leadership (dictator, tyrant, autocrat - sometimes it's easier being a dictator, right George? - ""If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." President Bush, December 18, 2000) in Pakistan.