The Insanity of the Wardrums Continue to Beat

I’m sitting here, looking over today’s news and I’m just floored.  I expected Bush to tell his underlings to defy Congress, unless they testify behind closed doors without a transcript.  That was par for the course. We’ve been down this road before, a number of times. More notably, there has been a reversal of the “behind closed doors without a transcript” routine. If it happened once, don’t you think it can happen again?  Here’s a clue — public outrage spurring on the spine-challenged Congress.

When Bush announced lowering the bar on Iraq, you knew something was up.  It should be particularly profound coming on the heels of the doomed al-Maliki government. And you can just bet this drivel will be used to justify sending more of our troops to Iraq.

A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration’s reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.

One likely result of the report will be a vastly accelerated debate among President Bush’s top aides on withdrawing troops and scaling back the U.S. presence in Iraq.

The “pivot point” for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush’s so-called “surge” plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released, the official said.

“The facts are not in question,” the official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the draft is still under discussion. “The real question is how the White House proceeds with a post-surge strategy in light of the report.”

Talk about it now, before the majority of repugs jump ship. But, more importantly, talk about it now, instead of September, before more reservists have a chance to jump ship.

Yup, some of our reservists are getting more than they bargained for.  How many deployments would you think are necessary? One? Two? Or four? Try five.

Erik Botta believes he’s done right by his country.

    Days after 9/11, as a young Army reservist, he volunteered to go to war. He was soon in Afghanistan.

    The next year, he was sent out again, this time to Iraq, part of a Special Operations team.

    In the next two years, he was sent to Iraq again. And again.

    He thought he was done. But now, the Army wants Sgt. Botta one more time.

    The 26-year-old Port St. Lucie man has been ordered to report to Fort Jackson, S.C., on July 15 for his fifth deployment. And that has compelled Botta, a first-generation American who counts himself a quiet patriot, to do something he never thought he’d do: sue the Army.

    ”I’m proud of my service,” he said. “I never wanted it to end like this.”

    Nearly seven years into his eight-year commitment to the reserves, the personal costs are higher for Botta. He could lose his home. His job at Sikorsky, working on the Black Hawk military helicopter, could be on the line. He’s halfway to his electrical engineering degree, planning a career in defense work, but his professors say he’ll suffer a significant setback if he is deployed. He doesn’t mention the danger another deployment would bring, but his wife and parents do.

A reservist, for chrissake, being deployed for the fifth time?  Are we going to just keep sending this guy back until he dies? Seriously, people.  Why are reservists being deployed 4 and 5 times? What seriously boggles my mind is that the Army is telling this guy to go hell, for the fifth time, and too it’s too fucking bad if he loses his house, and job, and has to take classes over.

Meanwhile some in the Iraqi government are telling people to arm themselves? That is the madness, we are sending people like Erik Botta into.

Amazingly, somehow, in all this madness, Rove thinks Iraq won’t be an issue next year? Who the fuck is he kidding? More importantly, what reality is he living in?