Joe Galloway, perhaps the only professional writer in the US who’s earned the CIB he’s not allowed to wear, discusses the Decider-in-Chief’s unwillingness to protect the troops because his ego is more important.

Bush determined to prolong lost war

The time for bumper-sticker bombast, sound-bite strategizing and gotcha politics as practiced by the politicians who infest the nation's capital needs to end right now, at least where it intersects with the disaster that is the Iraq War.

There's no high ground left to capture by either a stubborn president who won't see or hear the truth about where his path to "victory" in a lost war really leads, or the new Democratic majority in Congress, which is too timid and fearful of doing what they were elected to do - bring an end to the war as swiftly as possible.

While the politicians - a pox on all of them - wrangled and dithered and bloviated American troops were dying at record numbers on the bomb-blasted roads and streets of Iraq. The month of April saw 104 American soldiers and Marines travel home in flag-draped coffins, out of sight of the cameras and the American people in whose name they died. It was the sixth highest monthly death toll of the war.

This past week was a circus of the ridiculous as President Bush went on television every day threatening to veto a bill providing the billions needed to continue to prosecute his war - only the second veto The Decider has exercised in his six years in power - on grounds that the Democrats were trying to substitute the judgments of politicians for that of the military commanders on the ground.

Of course, as always when he speaks bumbles in public, Mr Bu$h was lying. The Democrats were trying to substitute the judgments of a populace sick of being lied to, and cheated, for that of the liars and cheats who picked and chose the most malleable military commanders they could find. I don’t have much faith in the military prowess, or the strategic skill, of any officer who has groveled before these men after the last six years. Any uniformed officer willing to cast his lot with the Bu$h malAdministration has already foresworn his solemn oath, in my view.

Let’s face it – we are where we are because as a nation we earned it. We watched, stupefied, as an election was stolen right out in the open in 2000. There should have been thousands of people in Washington within three days, climbing the fence of the White House in outrage. On the day of Mr Bu$h’s inauguration, hundreds of thousands of Americans should have been in the DC area, with enough rancid, spoiled fruit and vegetables to create piles it would have taken two weeks for the sanitation trucks to pick up.

I’ve heard it said that there were in fact instances of rotten fruit thrown at Mr Bu$h’s limousine. A friend of mine suggested that this is the root cause of the man’s sociopathic hatred of and contempt for, average Americans.

Nonsense. The man is just twisted, evil, a malformed child-emotion in an adult’s body. He’s been a bully all his life and has always gotten away with it.

The Democrats had already tinkered with their war-funding bill to remove mandatory guidelines for the beginning of troop withdrawals, making them more of a suggestion than an order. But that wasn't enough for the president, who demanded a "clean" bill with only the money he wanted to continue the war.

The moveable deadline for some determination of whether the president's surge, or escalation, of U.S. troop strength in Iraq moved yet again as our commander Gen. David Petraeus told Congress that it would probably be September before we had a good idea whether the new-old strategy was working or not.

And if that strategy is not working when September rolls around? That would not mean the war was over, administration officials hinted. They will think up something else to try.

The president is determined to continue the war, no matter what, until he can safely hand over the whole mess to whoever succeeds him on Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost in American and Iraqi lives.

America had a second chance in 2004, and the theft was just as blatant, this time in Ohio. Again, Americans should have been in the streets, in their thousands, in their millions. I don’t advocate riot. That is a good way to kill a nation. Despite the many examples of Mr Bu$h and his authoritarian minions, we once were a nation of laws, and perhaps we will be allowed another chance, to right the system, refloat the sinking ship of state, and again be honorable and peace-loving in the eyes of other countries.

But this will require more good sense and courage than our elected Democrats have shown so far. When Mr Bu$h vetoed the bill because it included funds for the support and health care of wounded veterans, they should have sent back the same bill two days later, but with $10 Billion taken out. And they should have prepared a third version for when the boy-child vetoed that one.

The third version should have been a “clean bill” as our Bully-in-Chief demanded. No withdrawal dates, guideline, earmarks – nothing but enough cash to float the troops for 60 days. That’s all. Just 60 days worth. And then Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi should have spoken to the cameras, saying that Mr Bu$h denied the troops the funds they needed when he vetoed the bill. Thus the short two-month bill as a continuing measure while the House prepared articles of Impeachment because Mr Bu$h’s refusal to accept funds is a clear and direct violation of his sworn oath of office, and thus a “high crime and misdemeanor.”

George Bu$h does not want to face the stigma of impeachment. He is a coward, a quitter, a folder. Whether or not it is successful, the mark will be there. The very act of impeachment will geld Mr Bu$h and he will immediately become the nonentity that he truly is.

The longer the Democrats continue to bring their bare knuckles to a gun fight, the longer the shame and agony of the Bu$h maladministration will continue.

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