"Surge"

So, fortunately I didn't catch the Chimp's speech before I went to bed. Caught the lowlights when I woke up. 20,000 more for the meat grinder is the bottom line.

Ladies and gentlemen, this strategy is delusional. Good officers, men who've led others in combat, men who've been educated in the art of war and baptized under fire have told him that "several hundred thousand" would be required to secure Iraq after we invaded. (See: Shinseki, Eric General)

If several hundred thousand were required to keep Iraq from decending into the mess we're in now, it will take far more than that to dig us out from it now. 20,000 troops are a drop in the bucket; the best we can hope for are short-term successes in certain neighborhoods, but one Friedman Unit from now, we'll all be asking what this 'surge' actually accomplished.

It will accomplish a few things. It will extend tours for troops already on extended tours. It will draw more National Guard and Reserve units into the war, thus degrading our response time to emergencies over here that much more. It will probably break our Army and Marine Corps. It will hinder or destroy our military's ability to respond to another crisis somewhere else in the world. It will affect recruiting efforts, already has. And it will further marginalize us in the international community.

And the bodies will continue to come home as will the wounded. This 'surge' tells us all there is no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel except for an oncoming train. We will continue to sacrifice our young and our money on the altar of George Bush's legacy, one that is irreparably tarnished and dented. Last night, George Bush said he cares nothing for your children's lives, your hard-earned money, or your security.

He does not care if our soldiers live or die, for he will never know what the families of the dead go through when a plain Ford Crown Victoria pulls up in front of the house and two officers step out, one of them a chaplain. He will never know what they go through as they have to break the news to the next of kin. He will not know what the honor guard commander goes through when he has to present the folded American flag to a grieving widow, mother, or child, nor what the person who is grieving goes through when the rifle team renders a 21-gun salute, when the bugler plays Taps, when the coffin is lowered into the ground.

He will never know that because his daughters are safe and he avoided combat during wartime. George Bush must pay for this and the rest of his sins. He must not be allowed to avoid responsibility, as he has done throughout his life, for cavalierly squandering American lives and treasure. I want him out and will not be satisfied with a Nixonian departure, no ride off into the Texas sunset. I want to see his psychotic ass in a prison jumpsuit.