Lying and dying

Once more, the American people are about to have smoke (or worse) blown up their asses by our dilettante of a president. His failed policy in Iraq, which he refuses to alter in any significant way, continues to breed discordance, disaster and death.

Given the opportunity of cover by the Iraq Study Group, an assemblage of minds, all with vast foreign policy experience that the American people bought into and respected, this president chose to dismiss their recommendations with his typical wave of indifference, tempered with his customary hubris. Once more, “Boy George” has to have it his way!

There has been a great deal of discussion among the usual talking heads and their paper surrogates about the president’s strategy. The new buzzword for Bush’s decision to prolong the clusterfuck in Iraq, is “troop surge.” Call it whatever the hell you want to call it, in my opinion, it is just Bush being Bush.

I listened with incredulity yesterday morning, while driving to work, as NPR carried a story about how the U.S. was going to “do it right” this time and send money and actually rebuild parts of Iraq. Apparently the $80 billion poured down a rat’s hole hasn’t been sufficient up to this point, to “do it right.” If you really want to see the current track record of reconstruction boondoggles, read T. Christian Miller’s book, Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives and Corporate Greed in Iraq. His thorough investigation of this massive swindle of taxpayer money, which only further lines the coffers of large multinational defense contractors, like Haliburton, begs the question, do we want to continue to throw good money after bad? I mean, don’t we have better uses of our taxpayer dollars here at home?

Meanwhile, after much hoopla and pomp at the arrival of “Democrats to the rescue,” the word coming out of Washington is that while the Democrats by-and-large oppose the president’s “troop surge,” they won’t stand in the way of funding it. What a bunch of spineless hacks! Just another example of the delusion many suffer under, who think electing Democrats will make a bean’s worth of difference. I'm sorry, but Obama, riding in on his shiny white horse in 2008 won't save us.

On the Maine front, our two senators, Snowe and Collins, have been making the rounds, waffling per usual, talking out both sides of their mouths. While apparently expressing doubts about Bush’s plan, when all the votes end up being counted, you know these two ideological water-carriers will be in the Bush camp, signing on for more blood and bedlam.

While I grieve and empathize with the families of the 3,000+ American troops who’ve lost loved ones in Iraq, I know that number will have to go much higher before Americans turn the channel from their nightly ritual of tuning out and sit up and pay attention. While this number is too high already for my tastes and views about endless war, I also know that in Vietnam, the body count was in the tens of thousands, before Americans got off their asses and got into the streets—we’ve still got a ways to go.

I won’t watch tomorrow night’s address by the president. I refuse to accept any explanation for his continued policies of failure. I’d rather watch the 12-21 Celtics take another one on the chin, than listen to this pathetic failure of a president bumble through another exercise in lying to the American people.