Bush Admits It: "War On [ahem!] Terror" Can Never Be Won

It's just a post-Cold War excuse for eternal conflict that keeps the taxpayer-funded US military-industrial complex churning out money for Bush's mates.

"In a US TV interview, Bush, who has said he expects the war on terror to be a long, drawn-out battle, was asked: 'Can we win it?'

The president replied: 'I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the - those who use terror as a tool are - less acceptable in parts of the world.'"

(Note how he avoided using the word "Terrorist"?)

Democrats should learn something here: Bush is walking away from his gung-ho commitment to eternal war and pretending to give a $&*# about the "hearts and minds" element of anti-terrorism (in which his administration has failed dismally). As far as I'm concerned, this hypocritical flip-flopping is tantamount to an admission of error.

Will the US public really allow Bush to go back to his middle-ground "I'm a uniter, not a divider" lies? Can the wolf who threw off his sheep's clothes once again pull the wool over voters' eyes?

In the same interview, Bush called last year's invasion of Iraq a "catastrophic success"... Does he actually know what "catastrophic" means? It's an awfully long word for young George, and it's obviously got the better of him in this case.

John Edwards says Bush got it "half right":

"It was catastrophic to rush to war without a plan to win the peace," Edwards said in a press release. "It was catastrophic to ignore the warnings of the military leadership about the risks of an unstable post-war Iraq. It was catastrophic to dismiss warnings of creating chaotic terrorists havens as today's New York Times accurately describes. And it was catastrophic to tell the American public that rebuilding Iraq would not burden the American taxpayers with a bill of $200 billion and rising."

Bush also said the invasion was "so successful, so fast, that an enemy that should have surrendered, or been done in, escaped and lived to fight another day." Right...err... It was so successful that the enemy escaped... Well, I guess if your real aim is endless conflict and an excuse to occupy Iraq until the oil dries up, that's about spot on.