and the reason I watch Imus is..........

because Imus has some interesting guests on his show. I don't listen because he is not on a radio station in our area.

And I feel lucky to have caught his show this morning becasue Tim Russert, host of Meet the Press, was a guest. Now go to their web site and read the bull shit that General Casey was flinging around.

The following is from that show this a.m....................Imus talking to Tim Russert


NEWS QUOTE OF THE DAY
Imus: "You would think that I would get what you do having had you on the program hundreds of times and knowing you for years, and actually you had to explain to me that what you do, you get these people on the program, on Meet the Press, you get them on the record as you explained to me or we were talking about the Mary Matalin deal, get them on the record and then as is the case with General Casey, he was on the record last March and then he comes back and man it's tough. So you've got to have patience to be willing to do that but obviously you do, not to try to get anybody but it certainly is holding these people accountable. I kind of felt bad for the guy because he is in a tough position because I was talking to Evan Thomas about it earlier, you know he has got to walk a fine line there but it is what it is as Mr. Rumsfeld says."

Tim Russert, NBC News: "Well you know, there's really no alternative. There are a lot of people on the far right or the far left who want someone in my situation to yell and scream or lean over and choke somebody or slap them around and a lot of histrionics but you really don't achieve anything because you make your guest immediately sympathetic, and I much prefer just to try to steady as you go, draw people out. E.J. Dionne wrote a piece recently, where he said that the most important artifact from the pre-war debate about Iraq is not a secret document. It's a very public document, it's a transcript of Meet The Press the Sunday before the war, and I happen to have Vice President Cheney on, and there's about a seven or eight minute segment in the middle of that interview, where it goes something like this. The Vice President says, 'We will be greeted as liberators.' And I said, 'Mr. Vice President, what if you're wrong, what if we're not, what if there's a long, protracted bloody insurrection?' And he said, 'Well that won't happen.' And then I talked about troop levels and Gen. Shinsecki suggested it may take hundreds of thousands of troops for years to come, and the Vice President and his judgment at that time, before the war said, 'That will not happen.' I said, 'Larry Lindsey, one of the President's aides had some say been dismissed because he had suggested the war could cost two-hundred billion dollars, it's now over three-hundred fifty billion. I think forth and most important question is, that what if the Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds don't come together and unify in one country and they break off into militias and other segments? And again that would not happen. Those were judgments and there was no way at that time to say, 'You're wrong. How could you possibly say that? You're lying.' That's just not the style of Meet The Press, nor I think the style of good journalism, but we now have a permanent record as to the judgments believed by the Bush administration going into the war and you can look at them three years later and decide whether they were correct or not."

NEWS QUOTE OF THE DAY #2

Imus: "Back at what you said a couple of minutes ago that the Iraqis being willing to demonstrate that they are prepared to fight and die for their country. We don't have any evidence of that do we?"

NBC's Tim Russert: "Well that is, boy, that is the question. That is the question and General Casey and others will say yes we do. They are stepping up, we're seeing it, they are leading the exercises, they are leading the Operation Swarmer and so forth. Others are saying that is not the case, that the militias, the Sunni militia, the Shiite militia are stronger than the army. There is no national government as such , there is therefore no national army as such and that is why we have a civil war. That is the question. If you knew the answer to that Don then you understand where this country is going and I think we will know by the end of this year. Boy it is a tough one. It's a tough one."
Imus: "I mean, you just look ahead and no matter how they get out, no matter how we get out, no matter how it's resolved, a year from now or whenever, it's going to be a mess and we have the President yesterday in Cleveland saying that we are prepared to use force to defend Israel against Iran."
Russert: "Cleveland is an interesting city as you know and it was fascinating watching that thing because it's Midwest nice. People are very civil, very polite."
Imus: "You may remember you went to college there."
Russert: "I sure did...and law school. People stood up and asked the President of the United States very direct questions and that was such a measurement as to what is going on in the country. I cannot get off a plane, walk down the street, go to a church, go to a store without people wanting to talk about this and the interesting thing for me is normally when I grab a politician and off the record say, listen, what do you think? What should we do about social security or what would you do about this or what do you really think in your gut? And when you ask about Iraq they just have a look and they will say I have no idea. No one knows what to do. And everyone knows that the status quo is not going to be acceptable to the American people and so we wait, we wait and hope that the Iraqis will step up, but boy it's hard."

Do the people in this administration really believe we are all stupid. This has and must stop for god sake.
But that is extremely unlikely when the politicians are asked what to do and they have no idea. What have we allowed to happen and can this be repaired with out the loss of more life.

Maybe I should wander over to the CBS site and read the transcript of the Face the Nation, Bob Scheiffer interview with Vice President Cheney - he must of given some in site that we just have all missed.

I'm going now to write more complaints to Congress.......because I'm pissed and they're stupid.


or better yet go to my sisters blog and see what you can do..................she has some pretty cool links posted.

stay tuna'd.......................................