"Stay the Course" is Still Alive after All

I see that President Bush has reported by telephone to radio talk show big, fat, liar, Rush Limbaugh, that he wants Cheney and Rummy to stay with him for the next two years until he leaves office. Rush (the "Tokyo Rose" of the Bush administration) must have approved because he didn't mimic any of Bush's intellectual disabilities (other than his stupidity) on the tape I saw. No arm waving, circling his finger around his head, or rolling eyes.

Does anyone really think that we will be out of Iraq with Boy George retaining Rummy at Defense? Rummy, the very man, who like Bush, cannot admit that he put too few troops into Iraq initially, and continues to refuse to enhance the force, or to draw it down? Rummy, the very man even Republicans want to fire, if only to save their own cushy seats in Congress.

Asked today, Bush said "I don't know" if troops will still be in Iraq by the time he leaves office. Gimme a break. The only way he wouldn't know is if he had a plan top get us out of Iraq. We all know, however, that planning is something George and company don't like to do.

By going out of his way to call Limbaugh to tell him that he wanted the two biggest chickenhawks to stay was code for "I will stay the course, I just won't say it anymore," to the remaining right-wing nuts who remain his political base. Just yesterday, I opined that no politician would use the "stay the course" mantra again. George didn't say it directly, but most people knew what he meant.

He's obviously going to dump this mess on whomever succeeds him. Then he'll retreat to his new multimillion dollar presidential library and try to finish reading "My Pet Goat," without any further interruptions, like terrorists attacks or American and Iraqi death tolls in Iraq.

Bush before the Fall

As usual, Boy George has it backwards. "We'll stand down when the Iraqis stand up." Then when the al-Maliki government tells the U.S. military to take down checkpoints in Sadr City, the U.S. military objects.

That slogan he uses (and all he has are memorized slogans) has allowed the Iraqi government to avoid the hard decisions, do nothing, and rely on U.S. forces to do their job for them. Bush should be saying, "The Iraqis will only stand up when we stand down, so we're going to start to draw down our forces".

Speaking of memorization. John Kerry has created a nice little mess for Democrats in close races. This is what happens when you try to memorize your lines, rather than speaking your mind.

He muffed a joke about Bush that had been fed to him by one of his advisers, giving the right wing nuts new fodder for one last desperate attempt to sway voters.

Thankfully, good will unintentionally be the result of Kerry's blunder, because Bush is dumb enough to use it to continue to try to tell the American people how great the Iraq situation is. Keep talking, George. Pelosi needs you to deliver a comfortable majority in the House after Nov. 7.

Mid-Term Election Predictions

As of today, I think the Senate will split 50-50, with the Dems taking only one of the last three states rated tossups (Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia).

I think Sen Macaca of Virginia is going down. Not only has he shown he's not presidential material, he's shown he's a bully. People don't like bullies.

In the House, Bush is going to feel the public rage for having no plan after almost 4 years to get us out of Iraq. I think the Republicans will lose at least 30 seats, giving the Dems a 15 seat majority.

After six years of majorities in both houses, he is not sophisticated nor intelligent enough to know how to make deals with the Dems. That means gridlock, no change in Iraq, and another election about the war.

He is on the way to making the Republican Party a minority party again, thanks to his arrogance, stubborness, and concern for his historical legacy. It will be a long time before any politician uses the "stay the course" slogan again.

Iraq Timetable? The Bush Blame Game

The New York Times reported in its Sunday edition that the Bush administration poo-bahs, who have us quagmired in Iraq, have drawn up an Iraqi timetable.

Notice that it is not a timetable for ourselves. That's an important part of the "blame game" strategy that the Bushies have formulated. It's not to win the war. It's to blame someone else for losing it. The Iraqis, instead of Bill Clinton, will be blamed this time.

They have set time frames for the al-Maliki puppet governement to accomplish certain things, e.g., disarm militias, and other political and economic benchmarks that they probably cannot attain.

"Although the plan would not threaten Mr. al-Maliki with a withdrawal of U.S troops...the Bush administration would consider changes in military strategy" if the Iraqis didn't sign off on the plan.

Any plan that doesn't threaten withdrawal of troops for non-compliance is a joke. It will be like moving chairs on the Titanic, except much more serious. Those "chairs" will be our undermanned troops being moved from province to province again.

The only other alternative would be for the U.S. to "Fallujah" all of Sadr City and wipe out the Shiite militias, mainly the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, ourselves. We would need a lot more troops, which we don't have.

We would also need the public political will prepared to take many more American casualties. The mid-term elections will show that that political no longer exists due to the disastrous execution of the Bush occupation of Iraq.

No credibility equals no political will, Boy George.

The Iraqi timetables/benchmarks/ guideposts, or whatever they want to call them, will only help Bush play his political "blame game." I can hear Bush now: "We lost the war because the Iraqis didn't meet the benchmarks we gave 'em."

This type of planning is exactly the kind of gradualism that extended the Vietnam War. It accomplished nothing. It did cost a lot more lives.