The Kids Are Not Alright.

“But that’s OK, Mr. President. We’ll suspend sending them home, even though you told us a week ago that success in Iraq was ‘undeniable’.”

Funny, I recall Bush saying time and again that he would listen to his ground commanders and to follow their initiatives as to how to proceed in Iraq. Yet last week Bush, who’s never been outside the Green Zone during his back door man visits, is now telling the Pentagon how successful they’ve been since the start of the surge 13 months ago that resulted in 901 American deaths last year, the bloodiest one out of the five.

But the Pentagon being well aware of the toll this is taking on the boots on the ground and their families yet still going along with Bush’s suspension of troop drawdowns is just downright despicable, especially after his feel good news at the last SOTU Address of bringing home 20,000 troops by this summer.

And shame on Congress, sez Dear Leader, for “hectoring” Nouri al-Maliki’s puppet government that both Bush and his enemy Moqtada al-Sadr jointly propped up to power (apparently al-Sadr reneged on his second 6 month-long cease fire that he‘d just renewed a month ago.). How dare they claim that the crackdown since Tuesday that’s resulted in the deaths of at least 130 people (Thank goodness somebody does body counts) in southern Iraq really isn’t working?

That would be the southern Iraq that’s valiantly collapsing ever since the Great British pulled out of there last December. That would be the very same exact southern Iraq that Bush nonetheless says can stand on its own thanks to its security forces.

Which neatly explains why our troops aren’t coming home soon, right?