"Cut and Blame"

Since my last post I got a year older and a bit more cranky. My birthday began with cranky jr. jr. needing a diaper change. Nothing like waking up on your birthday and within five minutes you're up to your elbows in poop. And this wasn't run of the mill baby pooh this was like hardened road tar. Moving on.

I watched our bloodless national security advisor Stephen Hadley on Meet The Press explain how even though they have been wrong about everything from WMDs to war costs to being greeted as liberators they are right about the "surge." The surge is also a joke since the 21,500 additional troops going to Iraq are really only 7,000 combat troops - the rests are support. So the best and brightest running the country think 7,000 additional combat troops into Baghdad and Anbar province is the missing piece to the victory jigsaw puzzle. It's also worth noting that the number or troops in Iraq, currently 132,000, is really only 70,000 combat troops. The rest are support staff. So even the claims of 132,000 troops is misleading. But back to our "strategy" mavens.

The Republicans, who were thrown out of Congress on their collective asses, have called anyone who oppose the Bush administration's Iraq policy as friends of the enemy and terrorist sympathizers. "Cut and run" was the nicest thing they called the notion that maybe we should stay out of a religious civil war. That "cut and run" crowd that oppose this "surge" includes Oliver North, William Buckley, George Will, Sen. Chuck Hagel, Sen. Sam Brownback, Sen. Norm Coleman, Sen. George Voinovich and the list of Republicans who are cutting and running from Bush and his dead-ender sycophants whispering in his ear increases daily. President Bush has indeed come up with a new Iraq policy. It's not a "surge" it's called "cut and blame." That's the new policy. Send just enough troops to say "we gave it a try" then cut and run from every speech and defiant stance on Iraq over the last four years when it turns out, surprise, surprise, 7,000 additional combat troops isn't just a drop in the bucket it's a drop in the ocean. Then, in Olympic spirit, "let the blames begin!" It will of course be the Democrats' fault for opposing a losing strategy when it became clear it was a losing strategy. It will be the Iraqi people's fault for not thanking us for "liberating" their country and unleashing a religious civil war. It will be the New York Times' fault and the ACLU's fault and Michael Moore's fault and Al Gore's fault and John Kerry's fault and of course Bill Clinton's fault. Because if there is one thing Bush and the Republicans are good at it's fixing blame rather than the problem. An additional 1,000 combat troops for each 1,000,000 people in Baghdad won't do anything but delay our inevitable withdrawal from Iraq until it becomes some other president's problem in 2009. And when that happens the policy of "cut and blame" will have succeeded. At least they'll get one thing right.