Jim Austin

His previous columns are archived HERE.

JIM AUSTIN

Keystone Kapers

Keystone politics ( the Hal Roach kind, not the Pennsylvania brand) is alive and well in the asylum along the Potomac. Apparently a Democrat from Texas is calling for a review of the name "Freedom Fries and "Freedom Toast" as they appear on the menu in the comedian's cafeteria

Representative Sheila Jackson Lee was in support of the President when he said: "Parties should put aside past bickering." The Rep from the Lone Star State was quoted on CNN as saying: "A symbolic start to that effort" would be reinstating foods on the House menus "with their traditional 'American' names -- French toast and French fries."

So let's get this straight. We need to go back to our "traditional" American meaning of "French." Confusing isn't it? If CNN would only employ some retarded fourth grader to act as interpreter for the President and Ms. Lee we might gain a window into their logic. We are going to heal the rift in relations between the U.S. and France by changing back to French Fries.

Why not make a truly grand gesture? Let's chisel Jefferson off of Mount Rushmore and add Marcel Marceau.

Bush wants the French to climb on board the Iraq train and shoulder some of the financial and military burdens. Of course, the Americans would remain in charge.

How could the French resist such an offer? They should pony up some dough and sacrifice some of their soldiers to help implement a policy that they were dead set against to begin with. You know, I think they took the roomful of monkeys with typewriters off novel-writing duties and turned them over to the State Department to crank out our foreign policy.

Bush's ill-conceived, poorly implemented, and short-sighted invasion of Iraq could end in the kind of debacle we witnessed in Vietnam. Two years from now, after the loss of thousands of troops, will we see the last American soldier leaving the roof of the Baghdad Hilton on the struts of an Apache helicopter?

There seems to be no limit to the staggering miscalculation perpetrated by the Bush cadre of foreign policy imbeciles. VP Dick Cheney took up the entire hour on 'Meet the Press' with Tim Russert last Sunday. Cheney's arrogance bordered on pathological as he maintained that Weapons of Mass Destruction would be found and that there was certainly a connection between Saddam and Al Quaeda.

He also implied that the 87 Billion extra dollars requested by Bush to pursue his war was all they would need "for now." Russert's eyes bugged out even more than usual as the VP gave one simple-minded contradiction after the other to Russert's questions.

I kept thinking Russert was going to say "I'm sorry Dick but I mistook you for someone who had a clue about what the hell we are doing in Iraq."

Cheney went on to describe how the people of Iraq were welcoming American Soldiers. You know. when they deliver the old boy's prozac-spiked oatmeal and Geritol chaser every morning they should hand him a newspaper so he can get caught up on what is really happening over there.

On the domestic terror front we keep getting warnings about imminent, though unspecified, attacks. The strategy is clear. Feed the public regular warnings about terrorist activities that eventually they will ignore. If and when an attack occurs the government can say: "I told you it was going to happen". If it doesn't happen they can say: "Well, we foiled them again."

In reality, they don't have any idea as to what may or may not occur in the arena of homeland security. Nor do they have anyone in place with a strategy to change that situation.

November 2004 cannot get here fast enough