"Sir, I don't know, actually": The fact that America's surrogate commander in chief, David Petraeus, could not say whether the war in Iraq is making America safer was all you needed to take away from last week's festivities in Washington. Everything else was a verbal quagmire, as administration spin and senatorial preening fought to a numbing standoff.
Not that many Americans were watching. The country knew going in that the White House would win its latest campaign to stay its course of indefinitely shoveling our troops and treasure into the bottomless pit of Iraq. The only troops coming home alive or with their limbs intact in President Bush's troop "reduction" are those who were scheduled to be withdrawn by April anyway. Otherwise the president would have had to extend combat tours yet again, mobilize more reserves or bring back the draft.
I don't think Bush would dare bring back the draft on his so-called 'watch'. He'll leave that to his successor, should it be necessary, like he's doing with the rest of the messes he's created. I do not put it past him one little bit to extend tours in Iraq, call up the last of the reserves, and otherwise generally continue to wreck what's left of our military in a futile effort to keep the Iraq clusterfuck going until he's back down on his ranchette and can safely and smugly blame the defeat of his insane policies on someone - anyone - else. Just like he's always done.
[...] On cable the hearings fought for coverage with Britney Spears's latest self-immolation and the fate of Madeleine McCann, our latest JonBenet Ramsey stand-in.
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker could grab an hour of prime television time only by slinking into the safe foxhole of Fox News, where Brit Hume chaperoned them on a gloomy, bunkerlike set before an audience of merely 1.5 million true believers. Their "Briefing for America," as Fox titled it, was all too fittingly interrupted early on for a commercial promising pharmaceutical relief from erectile dysfunction.
Add hard-on pills to God, guns, and gays. That's Bush's and Fixed Noise's base, all right. If ya can't fuck, ya can always fuck over someone to make up for it. Take the damn pills. Good luck tryin' to find someone who'll screw for you. The Repugs definitely need a screwin' of some type.
Mr. Bush, confident that he got away with repackaging the same bankrupt policies with a nonsensical new slogan ("Return on Success") Thursday night, is counting on the public's continued apathy as he kicks the can down the road and bides his time until Jan. 20, 2009; he, after all, has nothing more to lose. The job for real leaders is to wake up America to the urgent reality. We can't afford to punt until Inauguration Day in a war that each day drains America of resources and will. Our national security can't be held hostage indefinitely to a president's narcissistic need to compound his errors rather than admit them.
Bush loves 'freedom' or so he says. Well, he's got it:
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose"
Bush may not have anything left to lose politically, but our troops and the Iraqis sure do. Thanks to that punk, we all lose.
This changes the subject a little but I couldn't resist paraphrasing Me & Bobby McGee a little bit since I was already thinking about it:
"Georgie dumbed his cabinet down just before it rained,
Rode us all the way to New Orleans"
Sorry 'bout that. Go read the rest of Pop's op-ed.
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