BUSH PLAYS THE BLAME GAME-- FAILS AT "WORKS AND PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS" AGAIN

Bush's response to Congress' passage of his Iraq emergency supplemental budget is to try to use it as a political weapon to brand the Democrats as wanting to harm America's national security. America has never had a leader who is such a partisan hack and so utterly unconcerned about our nation's security and essential interests. Who wrote his speech yesterday, Karl Rove?

His Regime is sinking under the weight of a tidal wave of corruption and scandals while he universally unpopular war proves more and more disastrous by the hour. Everyday more rats desert his sinking ship of state but the narrow arrogance, petty partisan maneuvering and isolation from reality are all we see emanating from his White House. A president's most important function-- one which trumps everything else combined-- is to provide for national security. And this-- in the short term, the medium term and the long term-- has been Bush's most egregious failure, guaranteeing his place in history as the worst president ever. He refused to heed his predecessor's dire warning about the threat of al-Qaeda, practically putting out a welcome mat to the 9/11 jihadis. His reactions since then have been that of a petulant child who could not have done more to harm American interests had he been working directly for our country's enemies. Monday's New York Times pointed out how well al-Qaeda, our most dangerous enemy, has been doing under Bush's policies. "As Al Qaeda rebuilds in Pakistan's tribal areas, a new generation of leaders has emerged under Osama bin Laden to cement control over the network's operations, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials. The new leaders rose from within the organization after the death or capture of the operatives that built Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, leading to surprise and dismay within United States intelligence agencies about the group's ability to rebound from an American-led offensive."

Today's New York Times describes his political brinksmanship as he accuses the Democrats of "undercutting the troops." He basically got up before the American people and did what he always does when he speaks to the nation-- reads a speech combining outright lies and distortions with half truths meant to mislead (what Al Franken used to call "weasels" on his Air America game show). Did he reach out across the aisle in search of a bipartisan solution? Has he ever? To Bush, "bipartisan" has always meant find a small handful of reactionary Democrats like Lieberman to do it his way. America's national interests are just left to the fates.

Sometimes it looks like everyone knows his policies in Iraq are catastrophic except one person-- the clown in the president suit. (And Mike Pence.) "The reinforcement we sent to Baghdad are having an impact, they're making a difference. And as more of those re-enforcements arrive in the months ahead, their impact will continue to grow," he said. But is the escalation working? Since he started the latest in a long series of escalations ("the surge"), another 172 Americans have been killed and 1,035 have been wounded, many grievously. On top of that over 300 military and police members of the puppet regime have been killed and 4,000 more Iraqi civilians have been killed or wounded in a civil war Bush's policies have promulgated.

Instead of listening to what Americans have told him and his extremist political faction, Bush is trying to shift the blame for his failures to Congress. "The bottom line is this, Congress's failure to fund our troops on the front line also mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. And others can see their loved ones headed back to the war sooner than they need to." Is that so? It was just a few weeks ago that the outgoing Army Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker indicated that it was Bush's misguided policies and gross incompetence that were wrecking the Army, not Congress' concern about Bush's mismanagement. Last month the Bush Regime's callous disregard for our servicemen was exposed in Salon. "As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records… The injured soldiers interviewed by Salon, however, expressed considerable worry about going to Iraq with physical deficits because it could endanger them or their fellow soldiers. Some were injured on previous combat tours. Some of their ills are painful conditions from training accidents or, among relatively older troops, degenerative problems like back injuries or blown-out knees. Some of the soldiers have been in the Army for decades."

This week the Washington Post was making a similar point about Bush's utter incompetence to act as Commander-in-Chief.

For just the second time since the war began, the Army is sending large units back to Iraq without giving them at least a year at home, defense officials said Monday.  The move signaled how stretched the U.S. fighting force has become.  A combat brigade from New York and a Texas headquarters unit will return to Iraq this summer in order to maintain through August the military buildup President Bush announced earlier this year. Overall, the Pentagon announced, 7,000 troops will be going to Iraq in the coming months as part of the effort to keep 20 brigades in the country to help bolster the Baghdad security plan. A brigade is roughly 3,000 soldiers.

No president has ever misused this country's armed forces as blatantly as Bush-- and as disastrously for our country's national security. Military experts-- within the services-- say Bush's mismanagement are forcing them into a death spiral.

It will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a 'death spiral,' in which the ever more rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand. The risk to the nation is serious and deepening, senior officers warn, because the U.S. military now lacks a large strategic reserve of ground troops ready to respond quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises, whether the internal collapse of Pakistan, a conflict with Iran or an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula. Air and naval power can only go so far in compensating for infantry, artillery and other land forces, they said. An immediate concern is that critical Army overseas equipment stocks for use in another conflict have been depleted by the recent troop increases in Iraq, they said.

You ask why Murtha and Democrats will long histories of working with the military and working in a bipartisan fashion with Republicans towards a nonpartisan national security are bucking Bush so vehemently? You should ask because incurious George certainly isn't. The San Francisco Chronicle:

Soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division had so little time between deployments to Iraq they had to cram more than a year's worth of training into four months. Some had only a few days to learn how to fire their new rifles before they deployed to Iraq -- for the third time -- last month. They had no access to the heavily armored vehicles they will be using in Iraq, so they trained on a handful of old military trucks instead. And some soldiers were assigned to the brigade so late that they had no time to train in the United States at all. Instead of the yearlong training recommended prior to deployment, they prepared for war during the two weeks they spent in Kuwait, en route to Anbar, Iraq's deadliest province.

And, more recently, the Boston Globe reported much the same dismal picture: "The Army, already stretched thin from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, attributes the accelerated promotion rates to the pressures of war and the urgent need for field commanders. Another reason for the vacancies, military analysts say: unit leaders are quitting the Army faster than anticipated-- after multiple tours of duty in Iraq. The shortage of captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels is especially pronounced among experienced officers who have between five and 15 years in uniform, according to Army officials." Do you think Bush is fit to be Commander-in-Chief?

One thing that has sickened me is to watch when professional military officers disagreed with Bush Regime ideologues about military matters. They would be humiliated, fired, their careers destroyed and replaced by sycophantic hacks. Yet Bush's latest tact is to try to accuse Congress of "micromanaging the war." The irresponsible and incomprehensible move by the Bush Regime to demobilize the entire Iraqi Army was probably the stupidest and most costly mistakes ever taken by an American president. In one single stroke the incompetents and imbeciles in the Bush Regime undermined efforts to establish order and secure Iraq's borders, effectively alienated hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers from the U.S.-led reconstruction effort, created a catastrophic security vacuum which led directly to the widespread formation of sectarian militais and to today's state of civil war. Believing their own propaganda that American soldiers would be greeted with flowers and candy, Bush Regime ideologues dismissed repeated warnings made by the CIA and the National Intelligence Council in early 2003 about the threat of an Iraqi insurgency developing in response to the occupation. As a result, the Regime failed to take any of the steps necessary to prevent the emergence and, later on, the growth of a powerful Iraqi insurgency which, more than three and a half years later, continues to undermine security and stability in Iraq.

Far more than the much-loathed Bush, Harry Reid was speaking for all Americans yesterday when he said "The President today asked the American people to trust him as he continues to follow the same failed strategy that has drawn our troops further into an intractable civil war. The President's policies have failed and his escalation endangers our troops and hurts our national security. Neither our troops nor the American people can afford this strategy any longer. Democrats will send President Bush a bill that gives our troops the resources they need and a strategy in Iraq worthy of their sacrifices. If the President vetoes this bill he will have delayed funding for troops and kept in place his strategy for failure."