NOW THAT MITCH McCONNELL HAS DONE A 180 ON IRAQ, WILL HE TRY TO JOIN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY? WOULD ROVE MAKE LIEBERMAN THE NEW MINORITY LEADER?

A couple hours ago Mitch McConnell was on CNN's Late Edition where, apparently not realizing it is way past too late for himself, he made some remarkable statements. They' wouldn't be remarkable for a normal person. They're remarkable for a rubber stamp senator-- and doubly so for the rubber stamp leader (ergo "My Bitch") of the rubber stamp Republicans in the U.S. Senate. He started off by declaring that the Bush Regime's puppet government in occupied Iraq is "a huge disappointment." There he could probably find agreement with all the Democrats, except perhaps Ben Nelson, and with almost every man, woman and child in occupied Iraq outside the Greed Zone. "'So far, they've not been able do anything they promised on the political side,' the Kentucky Republican said, citing the Iraqis' failure to pass a new oil revenue bill, hold local elections and dismantle the former Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. 'It's a growing frustration... Republicans overwhelmingly feel disappointed about the Iraqi government,' he added." You almost feel sorry for poor Mitch.

But not quite, not if you look at his perfect voting record. Since the October 10, 2002 (Roll call 232, S. J. Res. 45, the Resolution Authorizing the Use of Force in Iraq), there are been 31 roll calls regarding Iraq in the U.S. Senate. Not once did Mitch McConnell stand up and say he differed with Bush and Cheney and the small group of Neocon con artists who were setting the policies he now claims are frustrating Republicans and "overwhelmingly" disappointing them. From 2002's authorization to attack Iraq right up through March 15, 2007's S. J. Res. 9 to revise Iraq policy, McConnell has been the ultimate rubber stamp for the toxic agenda of the Bush Regime-- and after Dollar Bill Frist retired last year, the Regime's #1 Senate handmaiden, Team Cheney's Chief of Obstructionism.

Although the U.S. mass media is soft-pedaling it, a clear majority of the elected members of Iraq's Parliament want the U.S. occupation to end-- and end now. The Washington Post tucked this news away on page 12. But I guess McConnell must have seen it because it pissed him the hell off.

Clueless and out of sync with reality as ever, the Kentucky closet queen lisped, "I don't know what their problem is but this country has made an enormous investment in giving the Iraqis a chance to have a normal government after all of these years of Saddam Hussein and his atrocities... I want to assure you, if they vote to ask us to leave, we'll be glad to comply with their request." OK, I recall Bush once having said that as well. When do we start packing up and get out?

Not so fast. McConnell then remember the Rove talking points he always uses. He rummaged around in his gay brain for a moment and then spat them out: "I think Republicans believe overwhelmingly, is that the decision to get on offense in the war on terror after 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq has protected us fully here at home. What we are all discovering, however, it's very difficult to set up a functioning government in places like Iraq and Afghanistan... If we give up prematurely, we go home, declare it over, will they be back here on the-- in our own country? And I think the chances of that are overwhelmingly likely."

Scared of being defeated? Sure. Brainwashed and insane? Absolutely. Dishonest? Of course; he's a Republican politician whose been living inside the Beltway for two and a half decades.

McConnell is hardly one of the 11 so-called "moderate" Republicans who went whining to Bush about Iraq last week-- and then, to a man, all voted against the Democratic plans to extricate us from the situation. No, McConnell is as hard core as they come. Iraq policy is as much his as it is Cheney's or Bush's or Lieberman's. And their options are narrowing, the range somewhere between unpleasant and unthinkable, according to Warren Strobel in Sunday's McClathy Newspapers.