God Bless Oceania

Surreal. Bush seems to have forgotten that Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban are all Sunnis. I guess while Israel works Lebanon over, it's the Shiites who are the Bad Muslims of the Month:

White House aides have said they consider the Lebanon crisis to be a "leadership moment" for Mr Bush and an opportunity to proceed with his post-September 11 plan to reshape the Middle East by building Sunni Arab opposition to Shi’a terrorism. Yesterday Mr Bush cited the role of Iran and Syria in providing help to Hezbollah.

Lest you blame the unnamed aide for the above for the truthilicious propaganda, here's some more howlers from the POTUS with the mostest himself:

In Lebanon, Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors are willing to kill, and to use violence to stop the spread of peace and democracy -- and they're not going to succeed.[snip]

There's a lot of suffering in Lebanon, because Hezbollah attacked Israel. There's a lot of suffering in the Palestinian Territory because militant Hamas is trying to stop the advance of democracy.

Here, Bush made the simple and understandable boo-boo of getting "democracy", the political process in which people choose their leaders through elections, messed up with Happy Purple-fingered Puppy Time.

Yglesias lays it out for y'all to play it out: "There are many things you can say about Hamas ("trying to destroy Israel," perhaps), but trying to stop the advance of democracy? Recall there was a time when Fatah was in charge of the Palestinian Authority. At that time, the Bush administration said there was no need for Israel to negotiate with the PA until it agreed to hold free and fair elections. Eventually, the Fatah-led PA agreed to do this. At which point . . . Hamas won the election. How afraid of the Bush democracy initiative are they supposed to be? Does Bush even remember this sequence of events?" I'd just like to add that Hezbollah also did quite well in the elections after the splendid Cedar Revolution. And that Maliki, the elected PM of Iraq, hails from the Dawa party, which helped Hezbollah set up shop in the 80s. Keep holding your breath for that condemnation of Hezbollah from Maliki, guys.

The good thing is, the people of America are never going to stand for this willful and self-appeasing disengagement from reality for very long. Oh, wait...