Republicans have nothing else to run on

There must be TONS of dirt on Congressional Republicans that they don't want to get out, because it looks like the Corleone Administration has succeeded in getting their minions in Congress to fall into line on the Iraq War:

That emerging Republican approach reflects, at least for now, the success of a White House effort to bring a skittish party behind Mr. Bush on the war after months of political ambivalence in some vocal quarters. As President Bush offered another defense of his Iraq policy during a visit to Vienna on Wednesday, Republicans acknowledged that it was a strategy of necessity, an effort to turn what some party leaders had feared could become the party's greatest liability into an advantage in the midterm elections.

The approach might yet be upended by more problems in Iraq, as Republicans were reminded this week with reports about two American servicemen who were abducted, tortured and apparently killed. Some polls show a majority of Americans continue to think that entering Iraq was a mistake, and pollsters say independent voters are particularly open to the idea of setting some sort of timetable for withdrawal, the very policy Democrats have embraced and Republicans are now fighting.

But people who attended a series of high-level meetings this month between White House and Congressional officials say President Bush's aides argued that it could be a politically fatal mistake for Republicans to walk away from the war in an election year.

White House officials including the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, outlined ways in which Republican lawmakers could speak more forcefully about the war. Participants also included Mr. Bush's top political and communications advisers: his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove; his political director, Sara Taylor; and the White House counselor, Dan Bartlett. Mr. Rove is newly freed from the threat of indictment in the C.I.A. leak case, and leaders of both parties see his reinvigorated hand in the strategy.

The meetings were followed by the distribution of a 74-page briefing book to Congressional offices from the Pentagon to provide ammunition for what White House officials say will be a central line of attack against Democrats from now through the midterm elections: that the withdrawal being advocated by Democrats would mean thousands of troops would have died for nothing, would give extremists a launching pad from which to build an Islamo-fascist empire and would hand the United States its must humiliating defeat since Vietnam.

[snip]

A senior adviser to Mr. Bush said the White House had concluded that it was better to plunge aggressively into the debate on Iraq than to let Democrats play upon clear, public misgivings about the war. "This is going to be a big issue in this election," said the adviser, who was granted anonymity in exchange for agreeing to describe strategic considerations about the war. "Better to shape and fight it — as good and strongly as you can — than to try to run away from it."

Message to Republicans: It's too late. Thousands of troops HAVE died for nothing, and feeding more of them into this meat grinder isn't going to redeem this war without end, this war without strategy, this war without purpose, this war without a plan. This war, which let's not forget was a war of choice, not necessity, HAS given extremists the launching pad they needed,. This war IS the most humiliating American defeat since Vietnam. That's reality, and all the gaseous rhetoric spewing from Capitol Hill doesn't change that.

I might be willing to go along with the notion of fighting it as best we can if we had any indication at all that the Administration had anything resembling a clue as to what it was doing. But instead, we are foundering in Iraq. Kidnappings and torture deaths of American soldiers. Soldiers being killed by the very Iraqi military they are training. Soldiers being killed by IEDs. Bill Clinton was vilified after inheriting the Somalia mess from the current president's father and presiding over the dragging of the corpse of an American soldier through the streets. Yet over 2000 American soldiers have been killed since Captain Codpiece pretended to fly an airplane onto an aircraft carrier and crowed that "Major combat operations have ended" in front of a sign reading "Mission Accomplished" -- and not only don't Republicans utter a peep, but want to send MORE kids to be killed in a occupation without a plan.

Here's what's happened in Iraq just today as of 8:30 AM GMT -- and the day has just begun:

The new Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki has vowed to rein in insurgent and sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands of people since U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003.

ANBAR PROVINCE - Four U.S. soldiers were killed on Tuesday in two separate attacks in Iraq's western Anbar province, the U.S. military said.

DHULUIYA - Gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier in his home in Dhuluiya, 40 km (25 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad on Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

HAWIJA - Gunmen killed a carpenter on Wednesday in Hawija, 70 km (43 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police said.

KIRKUK - Iraqi soldiers killed a gunman and arrested two on Wednesday after coming under attack in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police said.

This is not a war on anything. It is an occupation of a country that never attacked us. It is a war that serves the geopolitical interests of a small cadre of corporatist ideologues. It is a war that has already cost us almost $300 billion at a time when the American middle class is being systematically eliminated. It is a war that is shoveling huge amounts of taxpayer cash -- with no accountability at all -- into the pockets of Halliburton, which has enjoyed an increase of 600% in federal contracts granted it during the Bush/Cheney years.

And Republicans want it to go on and on indefinitely, asking more American families to bury their children, while not one of them is making any kind of sacrifice at all.

If the Democrats had any guts at all, they'd be able to kick this kind of crap aside like an errant pebble on the sidewalk. Endless, pointless, bankrupting, botched war would hardly seem like a winning campaign issue. We'll see over the next few months if it is.