We have all known for sometime that this administration will say anything to gain or keep it’s abusive grip on power, but this is too much. Jim VandeHei at Politico.com is reporting that the administration has spent most of this weekend begging GOP Senators to oppose any resolution condeming the troop surge in Iraq. The article sites that administration has come to the realization that if Senators vote the way they spoke to the President this weekend, he could easily have 70 votes against him and his new, new, new strategy in Iraq.

Military commanders are entering the fray now by telling Senators, that the plan has a chance to work in Iraq, but only if Congress is seen as supporting the plan:

 On a more substantive level, White House officials are arguing that U.S. commanders are confident the escalation will work, but only if Iraqis and world leaders understand the plan has congressional backing. The White House has sent signals that it would stomach a resolution establishing firm deadlines and accountability requirements as long as it does not outright condemn the surge, congressional sources said.

 Um…since when do world leaders and Iraqis watch American politics for their queues on how to support or fight against U.S. military action? Did we have a flood of responsible nations coming to our side in 2003 when Congress voted to go to war? To assert that the world needs to hear Congress support this President and his seventh plan to save Iraq is absurd. Once again, this administration will say anything to get what it wants. The people in Iraq made up their minds years ago on opposing peace and seeking the ethnic cleansing Saddam had long denied them and we were the suckers who went in and opened the flood-gates of civil war. Insurgents, or whatever we wish to call them this week, are planning today for dealing with our troop surge, and don’t give a damn about Congressional support or opposition to the plan. In fact, I would imagine that the anti-U.S. elements in Iraq are on the same side of this debate as George W. Bush.

General Petraeus will appear today before the Senate Armed Forces Committee as part of his confirmation to become the leader of armed forces in Iraq. Of course the major topic facing the general is how he plans to utilize the additional troops authorized by the President earlier this month. According to the Washington Post :

The plan calls for large numbers of Iraqi and U.S. forces to flow into a targeted area like an ocean tide, temporarily overwhelming militia and insurgent fighters. But unlike in the past, when the tide goes out, it will leave behind a substantial residual force of Iraq army and police units, backed up by mobile U.S. troops. In this way, planners hope to “hold” neighborhoods rather than just “clear” them of the enemy. 

 I wish someone would explain to me how this works. Don’t the troops who remain behind to “hold” these neighborhoods, end up becoming sitting targets for snippers and the insurgency? Aren’t the American troops viewed now as occupiers by a majority of the Iraqis? So, exactly how does one go about “holding” a neighborhood by placing a group of soldiers on the neighborhood streets? The same streets where people view us as part of the problem?

Furthermore, the article goes on to explain that Petraeus fully expects to see some early successes with the influx of troops in the Spring, but anticipates that the insurgency will soon learn the new patterns of military action by the U.S., and regroup with even stronger attacks against our soldiers. How is this winning?

Do you remember what you were doing in the summer of 2001? More importantly, do you remember what your President and his Congress were doing in the summer of 2001? I do.

Just a few short weeks before 9/11 our President was perched at his Crawford, Texas ranch enjoying a very long vacation (5 weeks if I remember correctly). His attention was focused on the moral dilemma of stem cell research and how he could use the Christian cloth he had wrapped himself in to suppress promising research for curing diseases. This topic was so important that he took time away from chopping wood and barbecuing to address the nation in primetime.

If the Bush administration was so focused on terrorists (namely al Qaeda) why did he never once speak to the American people about the problem? After all, Bush knew that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the USS Cole in the Fall of 2000. Why did he not go on national television to the tell the American people that he knew who attacked our service men and women? Why did the President not speak directly and openly to the American people and our enemies alike and say that the United States was not going to take it and that he would develop a master plan for eliminating terror from the face of the Earth? Why was Bush and Company not more proactive in their approach to the war on terror?

This is the kind of questioning that conspiracy theorists love to hear, because it is so easy to say that the President wanted to be attacked. Personally, I just think the President was distracted with giving tax breaks to the most wealthy and in becoming our moral leader on deeply personal issues and that he simply could not be bothered with the big picture.

Five plus years is a long time ago for some of us. Perhaps our memories have been clouded over with more recent events. So I ask then, what were the Republicans (Bush and Company) concerned with in the Spring of 2005? Was it the war in Iraq? Was it Afghanistan? Osama bin Laden? Was it on protecting our borders? Was it beefing up security on freight shipments and cargo ships that enter our ports everyday? The answer is no. The Republicans were worried about the obviously brain-dead Terri Schiavo and having her feeding tube removed. They [Republicans] simply could not stand to have a moral and personal decision go with intervening by creating bogus laws for one specific case. Once again the GOP decided to wrap itself in the Christian cloth of morality in hopes of undermining the personal freedoms and personal relationship between an individual choice and their belief system.

How is that related to the war on terror? Does this demonstrate that the Republicans are the party of protecting the American people? Again, no. But as long as the “war on terror” is being fought, the Republicans know that they have a banner to wave that proclaims them as the gladiators that are going to save us all.

In 2004 the GOP pulled out all of the stops and forced the same-sex marriage debate front and center for the general election. The plan was to stir fear that the American family was somehow threatened by two loving people sharing in the same rights (not privileges, but rights) as everyone else. The summer of 2006 started out the same way. The GOP was down in the polls and it needed a boost, so twice the House of Representatives passed bills to amend the Constitution to ensure that same-sex couples never receive any rights at all, and twice the Senate rejected the same initiative. When that didn’t work, the GOP turned to protecting our borders. The President even went before the nation on primetime (something he likes to do for political reasons and seldom out of the collective interest of the citizenry) to spell out his plan for protecting the border with Mexico and to lay out his plans for immigration. But in the spirit of true Republicanism, the House has spent the entire summer touring the country talking about the issue but doing little else. Now there isn’t enough time to act on any legislation, so Congress has delayed the vote until after the election.

How is any of this serving the needs of this country in the war on terror? The Republicans are not about protecting anyone but themselves and their financial supporters. Good people with good common sense and the ability to think critically should remember all of this as they head to the polls in November.

For years the Republicans have run around screaming about the wonderful job they are doing with terrorism, and how the country would not be in this mess were it not for Bill Clinton. Earlier this month they coaxed ABC to run a mocumentary about the lead up to the attacks on 9/11, with many parts that were out right fictional, much to the pleasure of the likes of Rush “Drug King” Limbaugh.

So, finally, Bill Clinton has his say, and he has it on Fox News, where it tells Chris Wallace to “sit there with that smug look on your face”. (By the way, there is a point where Bill Clinton asks Chris Wallace why he has never asked a Bush administration representative the same questions he is asking him, to which Wallace replies that he has and Clinton basically calls him a liar. Think Progress has done fact checking, and it looks like Clinton wins this round. Wallace in fact has had at least three opporunities to ask the same questions surrounding the 9/11 attacks and has never done so.)

And so the Republicans line up to cheer on Fox News (the same people who jeered them last week for contributing money to a gay journalists group), and point at Clinton as coming unhinged on the program. To me Bill Clinton appears to be more eloquent, more articulate and demonstrates a greater grasp of reality than George W. Bush ever has. Over on YouTube, there is a right-head who actually said:

His [Clinton's] narcissism, rambling answers and physical intimidation of Wallace are ridiculously embarrassing and far beneath a President.

WTF Mary! Um, if you exchanged “Wallace” with any global leader’s name you would have described George W. Bush.

For all of the self-serving pat on the backs that the Republicans give themselves for being “tough” on terrorism, there seems to be a back story to the E. coli spinach disaster that the MSM has missed:

Shouldn’t the protection of our food supply be a part of this new war on terror? Imagine for a moment that somehow a terrorist released a batch of germ cells on spinach, or oranges, or in the cattle feed yards. One would think that the U.S. government has taken great steps to prevent, or at the very least catch, such occurrences.

Apparently that line of thinking is wrong. It seems that the only way the federal government knows that there is a problem with the food chain is when people start dying.  So how is it again that we are safer under this administration? The food chain is still exposed, our sea ports are still largely unchecked, the borders with Mexico and Canada are a joke, the freight carried on airliners is sorely unmonitored. Wow! That leaves only two obvious steps to “protect” the American people: airport passenger screening, and wiretapping on any form of communication which is a clear violation of the Constitution.

It was revealed today, through CBS News, that Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan, was threatened shortly after 9/11 to support the United States in its efforts to capture the al Qaeda and eradicate the Taliban or face the consequences of being “bombed back to the Stone Age”. 

According to CNN, this revelation is news to President Bush, who was “taken aback” by the “harshness of the words”. The news report goes on to say that Richard Armitage was the source of the threat. 

 Okay, let’s think about this for a minute. In the days following 9/11, Bush appears in every hide-away bunker and closet in the White House, the Pentagon, and his Crawford ranch using terms like “Wanted: Dead or Alive”, calls for a “crusade” against Muslims, and tells every nation on the globe “You are either with us or against us”, and he is “taken aback” by the harshness of the language used to persuade Pakistan to join the fight? 

One of two things is happening here. Either the President is completely delusional and has no concept of reality and history, or he is flat-out lying. My personal view is torn on which case is more accurate, both are plausible and probable. The bottom line is that as a leader on the world stage, you have a responsibility to act in a certain way. You simply cannot go around and make the kinds of statements that the President made after 9/11 and not expect repercussions. As President, people listen to you intently — especially in times of great need and desperation, and that means you should watch your language as not to create a sense of irresponsibility among your “followers”. 

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, FDR did exactly what had to be done, the only thing that he could do, and unified the nation for a common cause. When Korea was falling apart, Eisenhower did everything he could through negotiation, cooperation, reaching and forming allies and military might to solve a problem. When the Civil Rights movement was forming in the early 1960’s, JFK did much the same thing by utilizing diplomatic and police action to protect the rights of the minority while guiding the nation to a new sense of realization in terms of race. Even Reagan was diplomatic in fighting the Cold War while flexing military might (even if it was all “show”). Those are examples of leadership. Bush is an example of radical knee-jerk reactions gone astray. 

And finally, I wonder why it is that Richard Armitage, the man who apparently threatened Pakistan in the first place, AND revealed that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative has not been forced to face some type of music somewhere. 

Anyone who believes that John McCain will maintain his stance of opposition to the President’s detainee legislative proposal to the very end is absolutely fooling themselves. This man has more desire to replace Bush in 2009 than anyother candidate, Republican or otherwise, and showing any sign of opposition to the President’s one single strength (fighting terriorism) is asking for trouble from the Republican base.

In the end, McCain and Company will fall in line and deliver to the GOP a victory and give America another moral black eye, simply because the devils (Karl Rove and George Bush) know that the soft spot for any politician is his ego and need for more power.

The Washington Post has an excellent editorial on this very topic today:

Substantively, the legislative battle will shape what limits the administration will face on its anti-terrorism policies in the final two years of Bush’s term. Politically, McCain’s willingness once again to confront Bush raises questions about how he will position himself toward the Republican Party’s conservative base, which he has aggressively cultivated over the past year as he pursues the presidency.

In a reprise of criticism showered on McCain during his 2000 campaign, some prominent conservatives are branding him a disloyal Republican and an unreliable conservative because of his assertiveness on the detainee issue.

Gee, that sounds a lot like “you are either with us or against us”.

In the meantime, Democrats have remained virtually silent on this issue, simply because they are hedging their bets that this is a wedge issue for the GOP and that by remaining on the edge of the debate they are less likely to serve as a unifying object within the GOP. Smart thinking for the Dems, but I hope they are prepared to lead with a cohesive message when this crap legislation passes.