Monroe Anderson

Ten years after 9/11, America needs 911

 

 

    On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, the Chicago Sun-Times assigned all its Sunday op-ed columnists to write on the subject. Below is what I wrote. I've cut and pasted it from a wingnut website, Free Republic. If you'll notice, I got honored with a very grown-up "Barf Alert."

    Well, five years have passed. We're Bush-free but still stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    We're also still afraid.

    We can't catch a flight without going shoeless first and we're more than likely to have to show our private parts to a TSA agent before we're allowed to board. Osama bin Laden is dead but his terror lives on. So does his toll on American freedom and finances. We've spent ourselves into a hole by occupying two countries in our pursuit of invisible men. While we've been blowing things up for the past decade, China has been building and building and building.

We're still stuck in the quagmire with President Obama afraid to pull the plug, rightly fearing that the Republicans will successfully label him our soft on terror, anti-American, pro-Arab, freedom-hating commander-in-chief.

Ten years after 9/11, we're still nation-building in the Middle East while the Midwest in our nation is falling apart. So, for this next presidential election, I think Obama should be making a 911 call for America--we need the emergency services.

   

Just in time for elections, Bush campaigns on fear (BARF ALERT)
Chicago Sun-Times ^ | September 10, 2006 | MONROE ANDERSON

Posted on Sun Sep 10 09:47:18 2006 by Chi-townChief

 

Just in time for elections, Bush campaigns on fear

by Monroe Anderson

Five years after the 9/11 tragedy, the kingpin of Abraham Lincoln's party is still dead set on fooling most of the people most of the time.

President Bush and his chorus of Republican pols, Cabinet members and neo-con sycophants would have us believe we're safer or, depending on political expediencies, not that safe. According to the president's pre-9/11 anniversary speeches on the progress of the war on terror, we're safer than we were before the attacks but not yet safe enough to steer clear of his failed stay-the-course strategy. As Bush explains it, al-Qaida's leadership is decimated but remains dangerous enough to destroy the entire civilized world.

There he goes again.

With midterm congressional elections less than two months away, the Bush subterfuge machine is in full spiel and spin. Too incompetent to manage problems that are all too real to mainstream America, such as high gas prices, 45 million citizens without health insurance and a sliding income for middle-class workers -- or capturing Osama bin Laden for that matter -- the president and his forces are back to wheeling and dealing terror. They're playing the same fear-mongering three-card monte game that worked so well in the 2002 and 2004 elections: See if you can find the terrorist threat under here or here or there. Find Saddam Hussein's ethereal weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Watch the politically timed color alert rise and fall on cue.

There's a book just out with a title that sums it all up: Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War. Authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn report that Bush hated Saddam so much that he privately let loose expletive-laden tirades against the dictator. In March 2002, months before Bush asked Congress for authority to attack Saddam, he bluntly exposed his true intentions in an unguarded moment with two aides. When told that White House correspondent Helen Thomas was questioning the need to oust Saddam, Bush snapped: ''Did you tell her I intend to kick his sorry m - - - - - - - - - - - - ass all over the Mideast?''

The president's anger was understandable. ''After all,'' Bush said six months later while speaking at a fund-raiser in Houston, ''this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.''

I think that's admirable that Bush 43 loves his dad, Bush 41, enough to try to revenge Saddam's botched assassination attempt in 1993. I loved my late dad as much as Bush loves his, and while I too would have been livid if the Iraqi dictator tried to whack my father, I wouldn't have set into motion a wave of international shock and awe that would result in the deaths of more than 2,600 U.S. military men and women and more than 41,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.

I also love my two sons as much as I'm sure he loves his twin daughters. If we're really in danger of Apocalypse Soon, as Bush keeps insisting, then we ought to act like it. The president should re-institute a mandatory military draft. I'll tearfully send my sons off to war, right after Bush tearfully sends his daughters to sign up in our co-educational military. If the war against Islamic terrorists compares to the fight against Nazis, as Bush insists, and if a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would lead to its conquest by our nation's worst enemies, then we ought to have a military reflecting that clear and present danger. There were 16 million Americans fighting to keep the world safe for democracy in World War II. There are 130,000 in Iraq.

I'm afraid Bush's plan to save the world from Islamic fascism is way too modest. He wants Congress to pass his terrorist surveillance act and authorization to try the al-Qaida detainees held in his secret CIA torture prisons. For reasons too simple for many Americans to understand, he's not interested in following the 9/11 Commission's recommendations to shore up security at U.S. harbors or keep a close watch on checked airplane luggage. Those measures, which would obviously make America safer from the inevitable al-Qaida strikes in the future, would cost big business big money.

But what fool would want to take those measures when it's so much more politically practical to scare most of the people one more time?

Obama should not take responsibility for Bush's 9/11 failure

    

    Watching today's commemorations of the eight anniversary of the 9/11 terrorists attacks, I am reminded of how badly the Bush Administration blew it. The most incompetent presidency in our nation's history presided over the worst failure in national security since Pearl Harbor.

    Keeping this in mind, I shake my head, then my fist, whenever Dick Cheney or his darling daughter show up on some TV news talk show bragging about how the Bush Administration's criminal torture practices kept us safe. This isn't just another exercise in tortured logic, it's a sputtering lurch of the right wing old fear trying to journey just a bit further on a road well traveled. The Cheneys, in presenting their mythology about keep us safe since 9/11 have never gotten around to telling us who kept us safe from February 26, 1993, when the World Trade Center was first bombed, until September 11, 2001, when the Towers were tragically toppled.

    That stretch of safety, by my count, was one days short of eight years, six months and two weeks. We're not there yet.

    I'm also reminded on this day that the Bush Administration failed to pull off the president's bullhorn braggadocio: "And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

    Well, either Osama bin Laden was deaf or President George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney substituted the bullhorn for the dog whistle. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks never heard from the Bush Administration. Now it's President Obama's turn. He wants to send more troops to Afghanistan. He wants to shift our misguided war efforts from Iraq back to where they should have been concentrated all along.

    I'm afraid it's too little, too late. The Bushies had a chance to make a surgical strike right after 9/11. They let the cancer metastasize. They created more terrorists and gave bin Laden and his henchman a chance to slip into Pakistan. The Obama Administration has inherited a bad situation that can only get worse. Sending more of our young men and women into the land where Empires go to die is a losing proposition.

     I'm having trouble writing this, but I agree with George Will: We need to bring the troops home. President Obama should adapt the common sense sensitivities of State Senator Obama and apply them to Afghanistan. Should the Taliban regain power in Afghanistan and should al Qaeda crawl out of the caves in Pakistan, we've can always hit them again.

    We're very good at shock and awe--but not at all good at occupation.

This post was also published on the UK Progressive  and the African American Opinion.com websites.

Except for the voting and the celebration, it's all over

     

     This is the historical day we've been anxiously awaiting. If you haven't voted yet, read my post then go do it. I'd suggest that you vote early and often but, apparently, that's only legal in Chicago. 

     Here's my ebonyjet.com commentary and have I got a prognostication for you. It was posted on the website this morning.

A Simple Prediction
a bold proclamation on Election Day 
November 4, 2008 

By Monroe Anderson

At the risk of ending up with egg on my face and having to eat crow come tomorrow morning, allow me to go out on a limb and make this prediction: This time, it won't be close.  Barack Obama's margin of victory is going to be so wide that the GOP won't be able to steal the election.

To make myself perfectly clear, can you spell l-a-n-d-s-l-i-d-e?

That's what I see coming and that's what the Republicans no less deserve.

In one national opinion poll after the next, from last week to last night, Obama has enjoyed somewhere between a double-digit to a high single-digit lead over John McCain. The O-Man also had an edge in six of the eight battleground states.

The advantage to Team Obama doesn't stop there.  More than 153 million Americans, a record, have registered to vote with about 10 percent being newbies most anxious for a change. You've seen, maybe even waited in, those long lines of early voters in state after state, night after night, as seen on TV. Nearly a third of the Americans registered to vote have already been there and done that, giving Obama a 20 percent advantage even before the polls opened this morning.

But McCain and the gang would like to have you believe that all the polls are wrong; that the Mavericks have better than a chance of drawing an inside straight for ending up with the winning hand. "They may not know it, but the Mac is back," McCain has taken to boasting in his final-hour rallies.

Believe not what they say, but what they don't do.  The Republicans have not been campaigning in Obama country because they've been working overtime in defending their own turf. Since the credit crisis hit and the stock market did a belly flop, McCain and Sarah Palin have been forced to campaign in the states that George Bush owned in 2000 and 2004.

But eight years of Bush have proven to be eight years too many.  After lying about the weapons of mass destruction, mishandling the New Orleans rescue after Hurricane Katrina and driving America to the poor house, the president has thoroughly ruined the Republican brand.

There are scores of other reasons why any politician with an R at the front of his party's name is wearing a scarlet letter.  But, I'll just tick off three color-coded terror alerts for McPalin and the rest of the GOP.

*Black pride. The enthusiasm among African American voters alone may help turn some red states blue. In North Carolina, for instance, half of the state's registered African American voters have already cast their ballots.

*Brown anger. The incessant rants against illegal immigration by the rabid right's pet radio hosts, Rush Limbaugh, Lara Inghram et al have infuriated Americans of Mexican descent—seventy-five percent of their votes will be cast for the black man.

*White fear. The hockey mom from nowhere may have ginned up McCain's presidential prospects in early September, but by late October Gov. Palin was a total drag on the ticket. Once she'd been exposed as the pitbull who was all bark with no intellectual bite, true blue white American patriots shuddered at the thought of her possibly having her hand on the nuclear trigger.

That's why I'm predicting an Obama blowout--with one not-so-minor caveat: For those of you who haven't voted yet, it's up to you. If you don't go out to vote and encourage all your family members and friends to do the same, by Wednesday you'll find me plunging off the end of a broken limb, gagging on a nasty breakfast of raw egg and cold crow.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. 

     And, before you go, take a look at this hilarious YouTube video, Hockey Moms Against Sarah Palin, which is just one more bit of evidence as to why the Republicans won't rule this day. (h/t to An Average American Patriot)

That One won the town hall debate

        

(New York Times photo by Stephen Crowley)

 

     So I’m looking at my savaged, decimated stock portfolio, fearing that I might have to come out of my early semi-retirement to find a job at the very moment when they’re being out-sourced or disappeared before my very eyes, as I hear the McCain campaign tell us that Barack Obama once hung out with Bill Ayers and worshiped with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
      Uh huh. That and $65 will fill up the gas tank in my seven-year old Honda Accord.
     Rather than old, unrelated news, I want to hear specific, concrete plans on how my financial ship will be steered back on course to Treasure Island. 

     I know Obama has a clue. I doubt that John McCain does.
    That’s why I couldn’t wait to watch the second round of the presidential debates. I wanted to see to if McCain was man enough to step to Obama with some in-your-face mud slinging or would he wimp out and pretend that he cared more about Main Street than Wall Street.
    I saw enough at the town hall meeting.
    For one shining moment, the Maverick showed up in Nashville. Right off the bat, he announced that as president he’d have his secretary of state “buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America” and have the banks renegotiate their jacked up rates.

    Once he got that off his chest, McCain rested on the tattered and tired conservative  clichés he’s been spouting ever since he steered the Straight Talk Express off the information highway to bounce along the bumpy back roads in Bush Country.
     McCain insisted on keeping taxes low, particularly for the fat cats. McCain evoked the right-wing idol,  Ronald Reagan’s name--as if that were some sort of white magic that would get us out of the mess eight years of W. misrule have put us in. McCain got stuck on spieling about how he supported the Surge and Obama had not. The Arizona senator also threw out the flag-waving slogans his peeps love to hear but refuse to give any serious thought.
     Never mind that the stock market has plunged 5,000 points this year, “Our best days are ahead of us.” And, never mind that we invaded Iraq—which had no Weapons of Mass Destruction and nothing to do with 9/11—leaving tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens dead and the nation in ruin.  “America is the greatest force for good in the history of the World.”
       And, my friends, McCain knows how to nail Osama bin Laden, lead us back to the promised land of good and plenty, win the occupation in Iraq and the Bush-botched war in Afghanistan—he’s just keeping it a secret until he’s sworn in as POTUS.
     The Republican candidate also knows what to do about making sure Americans have health coverage. Unfortunately for both us and him, his explanation of his insurance plan sounded like Palin's explanation of her readiness to move into the Oval Office—confused, bemused, befuddled, muddled.
      Meanwhile, Obama spoke to middle class frustration and anger with plain talk while sounding and looking presidential, which bottom-lined in “that one”--as McCain chose to condescendingly call him--winning the debate hands down.
    But tomorrow is another day for the right to play.
    With the polls giving Obama the win in both presidential debates and an ever-increasing lead in the national opinion polls, can we count on the McCain campaign to ignore our financial pain and return to the politics of personal destruction, pumped out by the right-wing fear and smear machine?
    You betcha!

You can find this one and others I've posted on EbonyJet.com. Also, you can watch the entire town hall presidential debate on the MSNBC video below.

Palin-Gibson interview reveals beauty's only skin deep

         Watching The Interview with Charlie Gibson, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed for women, Republicans and John McCain. This was the Trophy Veep exposed. It was the Beauty Queen Interview II, but this time instead of Miss Teen South Carolina, it was way up north with the runner-up in the Alaskan beauty pageant, Miss Congeniality.

      It was not a pretty sight.
     Sarah Palin didn’t know WTF she was talking about—and when she did, or did not, she lied about it.  She didn’t know how NATO works. She didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine was. She continued to spiel an alternate reality about the Bridge to Nowhere by doing some explaining that was reminiscent of Miss Teen USA contestant Lauren Caitlin.
    The big diff, obviously, is that Caitlin, the adolescent, was competing for an insignificant position that would do no harm. Palin, a woman who should know better,  is attempting to be vice president of the United States of America; the number two person to a 72-year-old man with a history of skin cancer. This time next year, under a worse case scenario, she could be the leader of the free world.
    How uninformed is she? Let me begin to count the ways.
    Her foreign policy experience can be summed up very quickly: On a clear day, she can see Russia from Alaska.
  Her reformer credentials can also be summarized just as easily: She may have kept The Bridge to Nowhere pork and abused earmarks in Alaska but when she goes to Washington, she’ll make sure such deals have transparency.
    Her maverick instincts boil down to this: when she and McCain get to Washington, the beltway boys had better watch out.
    Imagine what the right-wing fear and smear machine would be spewing out had Barack Obama spit out such inane answers to Gibson’s questions. Like I said, I feel embarrassed for women because this is only the second time in 20 years that they have one of their own on a major presidential ticket—and this one comes up blushingly short. 

    I am embarrassed for Republicans and McCain as well.
    Do they really believe the American public is so stupid that they’ll buy this pig in a poke—lipstick not withstanding?

Obama ventures into the belly of the beast: Faux News

      

     Bill O'Reilly is not smart enough, sincere enough or informed enough to handle Barack Obama. But his out-sized ego wouldn't let him realize that, so he stalked Obama and whined and whined until he finally got his way. The Democratic party nominee for president met with Fox News executives and agreed to sit down with Billo. This is part one of the interview. According to wing-nut O'Reilly, there will be more on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week and it's supposed to be more exciting.

Talk about a dream team...how about an Obama-Powell dynamic duo?

    Ebonyjet.com has asked its political contributors to pick cabinet members in a fantasy draft for Barack Obama should he become president. Eric Easter, Johnson Publishing's chief of digital strategy, was the first to voice his choice.
    I thought about the challenge and decided to go out the box in choosing the Veep in my dream team:  Colin Powell.
    Putting the retired general in the number two slot on the Democratic ticket would be the ultimate cross-party gesture from the candidate of change. Over the past two or three decades, a gaggle of conservative Democrats have denounced their party affiliation to before becoming instant Republicans. Turn about would be fair play with Powell's public rejection of President Bush's Iraq war policies; his public explanation on how the Bush Administration hoodwinked him into making the WMD argument before the United Nations; and his public criticism of the Republican party's dreadful mishandling of national governance since it's introduction of the "Contract with America."
    Of course, the power players in Democratic Party would never allow a recently-converted Republican to land the much coveted second spot...but while I'm in a fantasy mode, I figured I'd make a quick case for something completely different. Here's my ebonyjet.com commentary posted earlier today.

Obama’s Cabinet: The Ebonyjet.com Fantasy Draft, Part II


June 2, 2008 

By Monroe Anderson

Monroe Anderson’s been busy over the last couple of days breaking news on our stalwart Democratic presidential candidate. Fortunately, we corralled him a bit earlier to share his picks for the Ebonyjet.com Fantasy Draft for an Obama White House cabinet. He has a few opinions...)

Before I name my fantasy cabinet, allow me to be for real. Cabinet members are not just selected for their administrative abilities; there are also political considerations and paybacks to be brokered. Some appointments will come out of the Washington bureaucracy. Others will be marquee name Democrats—and, most likely, a Republican or two. During the process of inclusion and elimination, Obama will get tons of suggestions. So, here’s two pounds worth.

Vice President— Colin Powell
Forget get about Hillary Clinton. She can’t be trusted to watch Obama’s back and besides—he’ll get two for the cost of one with hubby Bill attached to the deal.  John Edwards looks good on camera but demonstrated as Kerry’s Veep that he’s not good at playing bad cop to the party nominee’s good cop; neither is Bill Richardson. Powell will make an unmistakable change statement for presidential nominee Obama.  Selecting a Republican as his running mate would turn tradition on its head. The retired four-star general would cancel out John McCain’s military advantage. As a former presidential cabinet member for both Papa and Junior Bush, Powell was so popular among Republicans, independents and Reagan Democrats that many thought him a more viable candidate in 2000 than George W. I know this is out-of-the box thinking but Powell is basically a Republican by opportunity only and should be a welcomed addition to the other side of the aisle. Finally, for the nut jobs out there that might be planning an assassination attempt of the nation’s first African American Chief Executive, they’d be forced to think twice.

Chief of Staff—Gov. Bill Richardson
During the double-digit number of debates among the candidates for Democratic Party nomination for president, the governor of New Mexico demonstrated time and time again that he is both level-headed and a peace-maker.  Richardson, who was one of the highest-ranking Hispanic appointees in President Clinton’s administration, brings the right blend of experience and respect to keep Obama’s White House in order.

Secretary of State—Sen. Joe Biden
At the risk of upsetting the balance of power in the senate, Obama will have to be frugal when it comes to recruiting for his cabinet among Democrats in the upper chamber.  Fortunately, with the Republican brand in ruins, the Democrats should end up with enough new senate seats to offset Biden’s move into the inner-sanctum of the Oval Office. As the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the senior senator from Delaware has been a major proponent of a no-nonsense approach to bringing the troops home. Biden also commands respect on The Hill and in the Pentagon.

Attorney General—Lani Guinier
For the past seven years, justice has been denied to virtually any American whose net worth was seven digits or greater. Labeled by the right as “anti-Constitution” and “the quota queen” when Bill Clinton nominated her for assistant attorney general in 1993, the president caved, kicking his former Yale Law School classmate under the bus. Imminently qualified, Guiner will make sure that the poor and the wage earner gets their just due.

Secretary of Defense—Sam Nunn
As a member of the Obama administration, the four-term retired Georgia senator will have to tamp down his opposition to gays in the military if any change is gonna come. But, beyond that discriminatory instinct, the former chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services is ideal for Defense Secretary.  Right now, Nunn is the co-chairman—with Ted Turner--and Chief Executive Officer of the NTI (Nuclear Threat Initiative), a charitable organization working to reduce the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

National Security Advisor—Susan Rice
Rice will have her hands full correcting the international miscalculations of President Bush’s Condoleezza Rice. Currently on leave from the Brookings Institute, Dr. Susan Rice served President Clinton as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.  She now serves as the Obama campaign’s senior foreign policy advisor.

Secretary of Veteran Affairs--John Murtha
The House already has a Democratic-margin safety net; therefore Obama can deftly move the Pennsylvania congressman into this important post. Like McCain, Murtha is a Vietnam War hero. Unlike McCain, three years ago Murtha called for a redeployment of American troops in Iraq. A Clinton supporter in the primary race, Murtha—along with Powell and Biden—would help the Obama administration consolidate support in military and veteran quarters.

Department of Energy—Gov. Christine Gregoire
With global warming threatening to end the world as we know it and oil prices at record highs and rising, Obama will need a director willing to steer our energy practices away from old fossil fuels and into alternative energy. As the governor of Washington, Gregoire is known for her green dedication. She made sure her state was the first in the nation to enact a mandate for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for public buildings.

Secretary of Commerce— Jeffrey Sachs
We’re going to need a heavy-hitter to undo all the damage to the economy Bush and his Republican majority perpetrated on us in this new millennium. Sachs is the solution. Currently a professor on the faculty at the School of International and Public Affairs and director of the Earth Institute, both at Columbia University, Sachs is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. In his critically acclaimed book, “The End of Poverty,” Sachs asserts, "Extreme poverty can be ended, not in the time of our grandchildren, but our time."

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out his blog at monroeanderson.typepad.com   

Terry McAuliffe mimics Baghdad Bob

    Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, Terry McAuliffe, is all over the boob tube explaining why his candidate should not be asked to drop out and why the super delegates should thrust his candidate into the party’s presidential nomination. Despite the virtually insurmountable mathematical odds, McAuliffe insists again and again that some how, some way, Clinton will be chosen as the Democratic standardbearer and will give John McCain a good whipping come November.
    He uses the new math to explain how her numbers are better than Barack Obama’s numbers. He handily and habitually helps to move the goal posts and reset the game clock. Along with hubby Bill, he helps enable Hillary in her fanciful search for the end of the rainbow.
    I’ve decided Terry McAuliffe is channeling Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf. If that Arabic name doesn’t register with you, then maybe this one will work: Baghdad Bob. al-Sahhaf earned that moniker because of his colorful daily press briefings in Baghdad in 2003 at the beginning of the Iraq War.  At the time American tanks were patrolling the streets of Baghdad, al-Sahhaf—who was Sadam Hussein’s Information Minister--claimed that there were no American troops in the city, and that the Americans were committing suicide by the hundreds at the city's gates. Shortly before he was vanished from the scene, he held a press conference announcing that our troops were "going to surrender or be burned in their tanks. They will surrender, it is they who will surrender."
    The Baghdad Bob alliterative alias was in the spirit of the propagandists who came before his—Seoul City Sue and Hanoi Hannah. In that light, I’m designating McAuliffe Tall Tale Terry. Like al-Sahhaf, McAuliffe spin is a gift to late-night comedians.
    Here’s Tall Tale Terry:

   

And here’s Baghdad Bob:

What do you think?

George W. McCain will strike again

 

   

    Forever the maverick, John McCain is mixing President George W. Bush’s politics of fear with his own creation: the politics of facetiousness.
    The presumptive Republican party nominee fears that al-Qaida might try to influence the November general election here with increasing attacks on our troops in Iraq. He worries about it, McCain said during a town hall meeting Friday in Springfield, Pennsylvania, because “I know they pay attention, because of the intercepts we have of their communications."
    What, he worry?
    A stepped up war in Iraq or a terrorist attack on America soil could be a godsend to the Arizona Senator, a bonafide war hero. Lest we forget, he’ll be running against either Sen. Barack Obama, whose national security experience boils down to a gutsy, well-thought out anti-war speech, or Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose foreign policy credentials are visits to 80 countries as First Lady in alternating capacities as Ambassador of Good Will or USO-style appearances.
    For your everyday American voter, right now it’s the economy stupid–something no one is counting on McCain to master. But a serious flare-up abroad will put the Iraqi war back on the front burner and put millions of American voters back on red alert.
    Of course, a major Iraq attack against our troops will increase the volume on calls to end the occupation but it will stampede the red-state bloc into wagon-circling-and-bunkering-down mode.  When the going gets rough, we’ll need a tough guy as the Commander-in-Chief.
    Who ya gonna call? The Iraqi buster! McCain will argue that only he knows what to do to put those evildoers down once and forever–even if it takes 100 years. The same lot of voters who believed Bush’s war to be a necessary evil will believe McCain too.
    In fact, should there be a major attack in Iraq–say the last week in September–I’m going to call an expert Crime Scene Investigator. Karl Rove’s fingerprints are bound to be somewhere.

What is it good for?

 

After being pimp-slapped by the Republicans for nearly a year, battered and bruised congressional Democrats have come to realize that all four cheeks are so red and raw that they have none left to turn.

Yesterday, senate Repubs road-blocked a $50 billion bill by Democrats that would have paid for several months of combat but also would have ordered troop withdrawals from Iraq to begin within 30 days. In response to the Republican resistance to the will of the American people, the Democrats are finally promising to do what the majority of Americans voted for them to do in last November’s election: bring the troops home.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has come up with a backhanded but effective means of making sure that the end is near for Bush's big blunder; they’re going to sit on the president’s $196 billion request for war spending until next year, forcing his administration to account for its misdeeds.

I say it’s about time.

As an op-ed page columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, five months ago I pointed out the shortcomings of the Iraq occupation and of the new majority party’s failure to end it.

This is what I wrote back then. Today, while the death toll in Iraq has dropped from record numbers earlier in the year, it keeps on rising.

Bring troops home now

May 20, 2007

By Monroe Anderson

We're waist-deep in George W. Bush's nightmarish Middle East misadventure as the new, theoretically empowered Democrats are difficult to distinguish from the old, hamstrung Dems of a year ago. They're still too timid.

Rather than deftly acting to bring the troops home, the Democrats continue their eye-shifting and throat-clearing while the killing and dying go on and on. Last week, the new majority party yielded to the oxymoron argument that we have to support the troops by keeping them in the line of fire. The Feingold-Reid Iraq Bill that would have cut the funding and thereby forced the president to bring the troops home was defeated Wednesday in the Senate. On a procedural vote, the proposal that would have cut off money for combat operations in Iraq after March 31 of next year fell 31 votes short of the number needed to advance, losing 29-67.

The bill was defeated even as three U.S. soldiers remain missing and the death toll in Iraq is rising. The bill was defeated even as our puppet Iraqi government continues with its plans for a two-month vacation while the American men and women serving in their country are getting three months added to their yearlong tours of duty. The bill was defeated even as reports of poor care at Walter Reed Hospital for the mounting number of wounded troops is barely yesterday's news.

The Americans who voted the Democrats into power have been let down. Instead of counting on the Democrats to deliver on their implicit promise to end the occupation, we continue to count the costs of not correcting Bush's calamitous course. Those costs have been enormous in human casualties and financial resources. More than 3,300 U.S. military killed and more than 25,000 wounded -- nearly 1,000 of those amputees. A minimum of 63,796, a maximum of 69,850 civilians have been killed, according to the Iraqi Body Count Web site. More than 400 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars squandered. And we're not getting much bang for our buck. Daily attacks in Iraq have fallen only slightly to 149 in April from 157 in March. Mortar rounds are now battering the Green Zone, Baghdad's last presumed safe refuge.

Last week's vote was a loss for Wisconsin's Sen. Russell Feingold and other Democrats who want to bring the Iraq occupation to a halt. But the undertaking forced Democratic presidential hopefuls, including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, previously reluctant to limit war funding, to come out in favor of the measure. Unfortunately, 19 Dems couldn't or wouldn't heed the distress signal that the American electorate fired last November, joining 47 Republicans in the vote to end the occupation funding. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is one of those Democrats. He said he opposes any measure that cuts off money for the war because ''we don't want to send the message to the troops'' that Congress does not support them.

That argument -- made smugly by legislators sitting safely and serenely in Washington, D.C. -- is about as logic-defying as others buzz-worded by the incompetent and corrupt Bush administration. We know them by heart. They play well to our emotions but not as well when we step back to question them. For example, could it be that setting a deadline to bring the troops home benchmarks the end of Americans dying for a continuously changing cause? What job are we staying to get done? Why are we staying where we're not welcomed? How are we supposed to secretly withdraw our troops without the insurgents knowing we're leaving?

We shocked and awed our way into Iraq four years ago, so if Baghdad should become an al-Qaida stronghold, what's to stop us from shocking and awing the city again? If 6 million Jews, surrounded by more than 200 million Arabs, have not been annihilated, why do we believe that an Iraq withdrawal will lead to a pitched battle with invading terrorist forces on Main Street in Peoria?

And, one last question: How much American blood has to flow to drown out the civil war in Iraq or cut through the hollow patriotic sloganeering here at home?