Add Iraq to Dubya's Flip-Flops

Well, that might be stretching it a bit. Maybe the better analysis is that George W. Bush will say anything to get elected when he's not doing anything to get elected. To reference TalkingPointsMemo again today, Marshall is pretty much on the mark with his assertion that Bush has decided "a soldier or two a day is a reasonable price to pay to avoid admitting a mistake."

And to brag on myself, as an ex-girlfriend would say, I wrote something similar a couple of days ago (scroll down to the bottom).

This is in reference to the latest drivel to come from Robert Novak, which asserts that Bush will, um, cut and run from Iraq once his reelection is assured. Hmmm. Well, that WOULD be keeping with Bush's history of flip-flopping.

Hesiod has emerged from his retirement to post about this (and a lot of other things). He believes Kerry could hit Bush really hard on this, and I agree--the point being that, as long as the situation in Iraq festers, and as long as Bush refuses to, well, figuratively piss or get off the pot on this issue, then one can only assume that he cares more for his own political career than for the lives of American soldiers.

It's also astoundingly clear that Bush cares more about his political career than he does for the lives of ordinary Iraqis, but unfortunately, few people in this country seem to care either.

If Kerry would hit Bush on this, we could see Dubya's ridiculous position unravel more quickly than a third grade arts and crafts class pot-holder.

Kerry, to his credit, has decided to make Iraq an issue this fall, and has opened an aggressive attack. We'll see how it flies, I guess. Bush aides are attempting to play the spin game of saying "that's what we want," (scroll down about midway), but that's more of a reverse-briar patch approach--unless they've somehow convinced themselves that the US public cares as little about dead US soldiers as they do or that Iraq is anything BUT a gigantic mess--which brings us back to the possibility that Novak, for all his weirdness, might actually be right: perhaps Bush IS thinking of cutting and running...

Nah, I doubt it. Marshall and Hesiod seem to think that this is just smokescreen stuff, designed to appeal to those GOOPers who've cut through the crap and see Iraq as the boondoggle it is. And, if Bush loses these folks, well...lord only knows what he thinks about while branishing a chainsaw down in Crawford as he tears into whatever he's clearing. Given some stories I've heard about his childhood history, I really don't want to know.