WHEN WILL REPUBLICANS REALLY START ABANDONING BUSH ON IRAQ? I HOPE IT'S BEFORE MANY MORE DEMOCRATS HOOK UP WITH HIM

Not every Republican is interested in playing Russian Roulette with his or her political career. Polling is significantly against the occupation of Iraq everywhere, not just in cities, but in small towns and rural area, not just in blue states like Massachusetts, New York, Illinois and California but in red states like Texas, Arizona, Georgia and even Utah. The pathetic pygmies™ are getting very uncomfortable standing behind Bush. It's the reason why "None of the Above" beats Giuliani, Flip Flop Mitt, Thompson and the remnants of McCain in every single poll. GOP members of Congress are panic-stricken. This week we saw a lot of Republicans saying they would be retiring next year. Expect quite a few more voluntary retirements and then dozens of involuntary ones after November '08.

One who is likely to announce his retirement soon is Virginia's senior senator, John Warner. I'm betting his decision has been made and the decision is making him feel free to speak his mind. A former Navy Secretary and a loyal, if grumpy, Bush-Cheney rubber stamp 'til now he's threatening to vote with the Democrats on bringing the troops home if Bush doesn't stop screwing around. I doubt Bush or Cheney were happy when Warner appeared on Meet the Press today.

The Virginia Republican said Sunday it would be best for the president, not Congress, to make a decision on withdrawals and that overriding a presidential veto would be difficult. But Warner made clear his view that people are losing patience with the administration's strategy in Iraq, a significant change is needed in September and troop withdrawals were the best way to accomplish that.

"That's precisely what I said to the president. I said, 'Here is an option. You can initiate a first withdrawal. You pick the number, Mr. President. And it would send a signal to the Iraqi government that matches your words,'" Warner said. "His words being, `We're not going to be there forever.'"

"The president has got to put teeth in these comments that we're not there forever," he added.

Warner is a long way from recognizing and admitting to himself the overall venality of the regime he has served so slavishly. The only place Bush is putting any teeth into is the jugular of American democracy. Republicans may soon be taking a bite out of one their rambunctious puppets, Nori al-Maliki. Just the way the U.S. installed Ngo Dinh Diem as the leader of a faux-democratic Vietnam-- and then backed the coup that murdered him and his right-wing brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu-- things aren't lookin' up for Maliki, despite Bush's assurances that "he's a good guy" on Friday. (U.S. advisors had recommended that the rigged Vietnamese elections only give Diem 60-70% of the vote but he insisted on 98.2%. It went to his head-- so we murdered him.)

Many of us watched former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi-- who couldn't even win the elections with massive U.S. backing-- on CNN this morning launching his, and the Republicans', campaign for replacing Maliki-- with himself. “I am not doubting whether he's a good guy or not a good guy,'' said Allawi who has been sitting out the recent troubles in Jordan. "But I am doubting the system of militias, of sectarianism, of trying to avoid the benchmarks which President Bush and the Congress have laid down for the government in Iraq." He's also admitted that "his party," which has moved aggressively to destabilize the Maliki government, paid-off a well-connected bunch of Republican lobbyists and p.r. flacks, Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, to make his case inside the Beltway. Sounds good, doesn't it? But don't believe a word of his well-crafted drivel. The right-wing Republicans and NeoCons want Allawi in and Maliki out because Maliki is trying to maintain reasonably friendly relations with Iraqi's giant neighbor, Iran. Allawi, meanwhile, sings from the NeoCon Book of Psalms on Iran.

American troops? Not so much. They just want this ended.

A call by Puerto Rico's governor for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq earned a standing ovation from a conference of more than 4,000 National Guardsmen.

Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila said Saturday that the U.S. administration has "no new strategy and no signs of success" and that prolonging the war would needlessly put guardsmen in harm's way.

"The war in Iraq has fractured the political will of the United States and the world," he said at the opening of the 129th National Guard Association general conference. "Clearly, a new war strategy is required and urgently."