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"That's the spirit Thing, lend a hand!"

While the Democrats are busy fighting each other, it appears our peerless misleader has been surrepitiously pressing the flesh on the circuit. I would thank Jules Siegel for sending in this link to President Bush Speaks with Nation's Mayors at Winter Meeting except that by the time I got to this paragraph, I was reaching for my blood pressure medicine. I loathe dishonesty and this was such a bald faced lie that it had me sputtering to myself in outrage.

And as importantly, the people of Afghanistan are free. They're free from the clutches of one of the most barbaric regimes in history. It is hard for the Western mind to fathom such a regime, a regime that refuses to allow young girls to go to school. But that's the way it was. And today, thanks to our coalition, and our deep love for freedom, and our intense desire to protect ourselves, young girls go to school in Afghanistan, and the world is better off for it. (Applause.)

The people of Afghanistan are not free. They suffer under the same indignities they did before we bombed their country, (as Andrea Harris put it), into glass ashtrays and by all accounts the Taliban are regrouping and are now turning to the heroin trade - that they had virtually eliminated while in power - to fund their resurgence.

I've been following the situation there for months and have posted on it almost since I started Last One Speaks. All the 03 posts are pre-permalink so you have to scroll to find them, but the linked material paints a much different picture and it's not that pretty at all. You can make your own judgment. Read some of them for yourself, 1/4/04, 12/16/03, 12/15/03, 12/4/03, 12/3/03, 11/18/03, 10/31/03, 8/28/03, 8/26/03 and 8/23/03.

I'm not going to read the rest of Bush's remarks. I've had as much deceit as I can stomach in one day, but for those of stronger constitution, digest those falsehoods and vote in 04 like your life depends on it -- it does.

[Title thanks to one of my personal favorites, the Addams Family pinball machine and by the way, we do thank Jules for the link. Check out his latest treasure, a work of art disguised as an ordinary book.]