Mikaela says:
If I hear one more time that we're in Iraq to foster Democracy -- at the point of a gun and even if we have to wall off every faction from every other -- I'm going to scream. Cheney's heading to Iraq this week to intimidate its Parliament to move faster. Sounds like a healthy way to encourage an independent government, no?
The Bush Administration doesn't believe in democracy. It believes in loyalty at all costs. It's holding all of us hostage until it gets what it wants. Gotta love freeedom. Ah, America. Land of Tyranny with very long, bloody, not-so-invisible global arms.
Here's the latest evidence:
WASHINGTON, May 9 — Moderate Republicans gave President Bush a blunt warning on his Iraq policy at a private White House meeting this week, telling the president that conditions needed to improve markedly by fall or more Republicans would desert him on the war.
...
Participants in the Tuesday meeting between Mr. Bush, senior administration officials and 11 members of a moderate bloc of House Republicans said the lawmakers were unusually [emphasis added] candid with the president, telling him that public support for the war was crumbling in their swing districts.
One told Mr. Bush that voters back home favored a withdrawal even if it meant the war was judged a loss. Representative Tom Davis told Mr. Bush that the president’s approval rating was at 5 percent in one section of his northern Virginia district.
The response to this candid assessment and plea for sanity?
Mr. Bush made no commitments, but seemed grateful for their support and said a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq could cause the sort of chaos that occurred in Southeast Asia after Americans left Vietnam.Meanwhile, speaking out of the other side of his smug mouth:
The White House on Wednesday promised a veto of the emerging House bill, which would essentially provide financing for combat operations through midsummer, but require the president to provide a series of reports on the state of the Iraqi military and the progress of the government in achieving political unity.
There's democracy in action.
More polls show that more and more Americans directly oppose the President and his misguided stubbornness putting American and Iraqi lives at risk (reposted from White House Watch):
Susan Page and William Risser write in USA Today: "Most Americans don't believe that the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is the key to preventing a full-scale civil war there or protecting the United States from new terrorist attacks, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds.
"Amid broad pessimism about what's ahead for Iraq and the region, one-third of those surveyed would be bothered 'a great deal' if the United States is seen as losing the war. One in four would be bothered 'not at all.'
"Six in 10 support setting a timetable for withdrawal and sticking to it regardless of what's happening in Iraq; 36% say the United States should keep troops in Iraq until the situation there improves . . .
"Only 22% of Americans accept the administration's argument that U.S. forces in Iraq are preventing new terror attacks on the United States; 17% say the troop presence is making those attacks more likely. Another 58% say the U.S. deployment doesn't affect it either way."
CNN reports, similarly: "A majority of the U.S. public disapproves of President Bush's decision to veto a war spending bill that called for U.S. troops to leave Iraq in 2008, according to a CNN poll released Tuesday.
"The poll found that 54 percent of Americans opposed Bush's May 1 veto. . . .
"Now that the veto has been cast, 57 percent of Americans said they want Congress to send another spending bill with a timetable for withdrawal back to the White House, the poll found -- but 61 percent would support a new bill that dropped the timetables in favor of benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet to maintain American support."
If only anyone trusted the Democrats to be strong enough to make that happen...
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