This Can't Be Happening!

How stupid does little Bush think we are?

The answer is: pretty damned stupid.

That’s the only conclusion possible after hearing him try to claim that the winding down of his “surge” escalation of 30,000 additional troops represents a “new” strategy of reducing American troops in Iraq.

I mean, WTF? It was called a “surge” because it was supposed to only last a few months. And it’s ending because when the deployment period of those soldiers and marines is up, not because it was a success, but because there are no more troops to replace them!

They have to be brought home!

And yet, here is Bush saying that because the “surge” is working (sic), he can start bringing the first soldiers home for Christmas (nice touch that). And here’s the corporate media, at least in its “objective” news reports, quoting him without the slightest hint of irony.

And how about those Democrats? They too are playing along, talking respectfully to that hack, Gen. David “Peaches” Petraeus (a man I correctly identified two years ago as the bootlicking self-promoter even his boss, Admiral William Fallon now calls him). They should have laughed him and Ambassador Ryan Crocker out of the House and Senate hearing rooms and told him that they would have no more money to play with.

Congressional Democrats should be saying the same thing to Bush: No more money for Iraq.

But they won’t.

They just want a bigger drawdown of troops, so they can pretend they’re doing something about the ongoing disaster in Iraq.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid whines that the Democratic majority is so small it is nonexistent. With Sen. Joe Lieberman voting with the Republicans, he pleads, he really only has 49 votes, so what can he do? The answer of course, is that he can filibuster any funding bills, and kill them with just 41 votes.

The Republicans know how to filibuster.

Whatsamatter with the Democrats?

And besides, the Democrats in the House have a more solid majority. They should be able to block additional funding for the war easily, by just not letting any such bill pass. Instead of threatening junior House members and committee chairs with punishment if they support impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be using her disciplinary power to make Blue Dog democrats toe the line and oppose further funding of the war—something she has been strangely unwilling to do. How about “war funding is off the table” Nancy?

In Bush’s case, I think it’s clear that he really doesn’t care what we think. All he wants is to keep his war going through the next 16 months, until he can hand it over to the next president. And thanks to the wimps now running Congress, he appears likely to be able to do that.

If we the citizens of America then turn around and re-elect the current members of the Democratic majority or, heaven forefend, add to their sorry numbers in 2008, we will have vindicated Bush’s estimate of our collective stupidity.
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Mysterious Deaths of War Critics

By the way, speaking of taking us all for stupid, how many people think that the death of three enlisted men in a truck crash in Iraq yesterday--three enlisted men who happen to have been among the seven who wrote a powerful op-ed article only a week ago in the New York Times calling the war a failure and saying the solution is for American troops to go home--was an "accident"?

At the time their piece was published, one of the seven had already been injured in the head by a sniper bullet. Now only three of the original brave seven remain alive and healthy.

The mother of one of the dead soldiers is demanding a full and open investigation into their bizarre deaths. Congress must join in that demand.

Sure, coincidences happen, but this is powerful strange. Half a million or more Americans in uniform have passed through the hell of Iraq and only some 4000 have been killed. That's roughly 0.8 percent. So you have a 0.8 percent chance of being killed in Iraq, and here we have three guys killed, all of whom had the courage to very publicly criticize the war.

At the very least, somebody needs to check who sent them out on that last mission together, and follow that order right up the chain of command.

As the paper that published their article, the New York Times really has an obligation to chase this story down to the bitter end.