Surprise! It's about oil

I hope you remember when this hideous nightmare that is the Iraq "war" began we were told by several people in the administration and elsewhere (I confess I can't remember exactly who anymore) that it was not about oil. Aside from WMD's, never found, a relationship between Osama and Sadam, nonexistant, the desire to spread democracy around the Middle East, a pipe dream and another lie, it has never been entirely clear what the hell we were doing in Iraq (but we were reassured that it was not about oil). Now Rove said in a recent interview, "we can't leave the terrorists sitting on all that oil" (I guess he thinks the Iraqis themselves have no interest in the oil and will just let the terrorists claim it), and Bush said much the same thing just now on the Rush Dimwit show. So could it be that oil actually did have something to do with it? Or is this interest in oil simply a recent development?

There was no October surprise. I was disappointed. Could it be that Karl Rove, master strategist, Republican genius, Lord of the Republican universe, simply fell down on the job? I don't know, he and Bush seem remarkably confident that they are going to win again. With their poll numbers how can they lose?

Republican sleaze and dirty tricks apparently goes on at all levels. There is a paper in Sandpoint, The Bonner County Daily Bee, which just ran an article suggesting that one of our Democratic candidates (who has an excellent chance of winning) might not be completely honest about his addresses and also behaved badly as a Board member of a local utility. This information is said to have come from blogs. First, the claims are totally false. Second, there are no such blogs. When the writer of the article was confronted and asked for the blogs he confessed he didn't know about them but we should ask his boss, the owner/editor of the paper who presumably knew about them. When that august gentleman was confronted he confessed that there were no blogs, only comments. When asked how many comments he didn't answer, when asked who wrote the comments he said they were anonymous. He then claimed there were also emails but, again, declined to say how many or who sent them. So, on the basis of anonymous comments (that may or may not even exist), and on the basis of emails (which may or may not even exist) they wrote a scurillous article suggesting that Steve Elgar may be dishonest. And, of course, they did this just a few days before the election so rebutting it will be difficult if not impossible. I have heard it said that Republicans asked them to write this article. But, no, of course not, Republicans would never stoop that low (I should say, on the contrary, it would be difficult for them to actually attain such heights of low-level sleaze).

And remember, no matter what you read anywhere or see on the television, or hear from first-hand observers, Bush says he is pleased with our progress in Iraq and we are "winning." While we are no longer merely "staying the course," we will continue our upward progressive trajectory towards our ultimate goals as outlined by our President and his trusty Secretary of Defense, Ronald Dumbsfeldt, assisted ably as always by our dependable President of vice.