A Troubled Mind with a Troubled Conscience

Thanks to the excellent Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall for some more choice quotes from the White House, including Scotty McClellan's effort to salvage his boss' ass:

"We can't "win" the terror war. But we will "prevail."

Bush himself made more of a mess of cleaning things up, with a whole batch of non-sequiturs, Freudian slips and illogical leaps of faith:

"I should have made my point more clear about what I meant. What I meant was that this is not a conventional war. It is a different kind of war. We're fighting people who have got a dark ideology who use terrorists, terrorism, as a tool. They're trying to shake our conscience.

Well, is that a Freudian slip or what? I mean, my conscience is clean, George! Wha'ts on your conscience? Did you do something to help the terrorists, something whereby their actions shame you?

Bush went on, quickly correcting himself...

They're trying to shake our will, and so in the short run the strategy has got to be to find them where they lurk.

Do you follow the logic there? No? Neither do I.

I tell people all the time, "We will find them on the offense. We will bring them to justice on foreign lands so we don't have to face them here at home," and that's because you cannot negotiate with these people.

Again, Bush is jumping from one tired cliché to another with no logical connection. Just like the "Saddam-WMD-Al Quaeda" mantra, Bush will soon have US voters believing they need to keep invading foreign countries in order to defeat terrorists.

And of course, we cannot "negotiate" with our enemies, can we? No, no, no! This is a recipe for endless suffering and endless war...

And in a conventional war there would be a peace treaty or there would be a moment where somebody would sit on the side and say we quit. That's not the kind of war we're in, and that's what I was saying. The kind of war we're in requires, you know, steadfast resolve, and I will continue to be resolved to bring them to justice, but as well as to spread liberty ...

Oh, yeah - that too! We gotta bomb and kill these people to spread the lurve...

Finally, Bush's defense of his major gaffe dissolves into... err... what is this?

There's no doubt in my mind, so long as this country stays resolved and strong and determined, and by winning, I just would remind your listeners that Pakistan is now an ally in the war on terror. "

Yeah, Pakistan is an ally, Saudi Arabia is an ally, and Iraq - which had NOTHING to do with 9/11 - is a ruin. No wonder this "war" will never be won.