Bush is a DECIDER - not a LISTENER

In a less than shocking revelation, Peter Galbraith, former US ambassador to Croatia claims that George W Bush was unaware of the existence of two distinct sects of Muslims in Iraq, right up to the short period before the US invasion.

In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

As one of the commenters over at The Carpetbagger Report said:

... Bush didn't do his homework in school, why would he do his homework on the job.

Cathie also has a view on the whole issue:

Bush didn't know the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni Muslim a month before the Iraq invasion. Well, neither did I, of course, but then I'm not the President of the United States.... (emphasis mine)

After watching this buffoon operate for the past 5.5 years, this should hardly be considered a surprize. Bush is a moron. The supposed common, straw-chewin', down-to-earth, inarticulate facade is, in fact, the real Bush. How that went unrecognized by so much of the US population for so long is the real mystery.

But, why didn't Bush know about the difference between Shi'ia and Sunni? Why couldn't he gather in that Iraq could easily turn into the nightmare which is today's reality?

Because he doesn't listen and his staff insulates him from the truth. The truth was out there and the advice was solid. In fact, one source, which was dismissed, had all the experience and wisdom of somebody who had been there. The American people should have paid attention, not because of what the source was saying, but because what the source was saying was being ignored. The source, after all, was one of the more popular heros in modern American culture. He broke through the Viet Nam syndrome.

"I have picked up vibes that . . . you're going to have this massive strike with massed weaponry, and basically that's going to be it, and we just clean up the battlefield after that."

[...]

"What is postwar Iraq going to look like, with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites? That's a huge question, to my mind. It really should be part of the overall campaign plan."

Said General H Norman Schwarzkopf before Bush invaded Iraq. He also said this after Rumsfeld suggested there was a lot of planning going on for the occupation, all of which centered around Iraqis greeting American troops with flowers and candies:

"I would hope that we have in place the adequate resources to become an army of occupation," he warns, "because you're going to walk into chaos."

And that's exactly what Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and his corps of military-service-evading neocons did. And then, through their own ignorance and arrogance, made it worse.

They didn't listen then and they're not listening now. Combine that with the fact that Bush is truly a dimwit and you now have the most dangerous US presidency in history. The type that starts world wars and thinks it can win.