John McCain's not an idiot.  I'm sure he knows it' s not safe in Baghdad, but he has to pretend it's safe in Baghdad becaues that's what the GOP base wants to hear.

...Most Republicans are still gung-ho about the war.  In fact, two-thirds of likely GOP primary voters support what Bush is doing in Iraq.  They support the surge.  They've swallowed so much Kool-Aid that any change in their diet would kill them.

What this means is, every GOP candidate has to say the war is going great, whether they believe it or not, at least until the primaries are over...But none of them will be able to say anything other than "the surge is working" or "if we leave now, things will get really bad" because the base won't stand for it.  And this means they're going to look increasingly ridiculous and out-of-touch as the months go on.  And there's no way they can "move to the middle" once the primary is over on an issue like this.
--"John McCain F***ed by the Republican Fantasy World," Bill Maher, on Huffingtonpost.com., April 12, 2007.  Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher."

It is our American tragedy, as well, because McCain became this sad fraud out of absolute necessity.  One cannot hope to gain the GOP nomination for president without winning over the party's hard-right absolutist Evangelical Christian base, and the opinions almost universally espoused by that base are a lot of the reason this nation is in such dire straits.  Our tragedy is found in their power over any national Republican candidate, and over the administration currently running the republic into the ground.
--"The American Tragedy of John McCain," William Rivers Pitt for truthout.org, April 06, 2007.

"Progress in Iraq cannot be measured by the same ideological fantasies that got us into this war, it must be measured by the reality of the facts on the ground, and today those sobering facts tell us to change our strategy and bring a responsible end to this war.

"No matter how much this administration wishes it to be true, the idea that the situation in Iraq is improving because it only takes a security detail of 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships to walk through a market in the middle of Baghdad is simply not credible or reflective of facts on the ground.

"What we need today is a surge in honesty..."
--statement released April 12, 2007, by Senator Barack Obama, Democrat from Illinois and candidate for President of the United States.


Remember in the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, how the two outlaws had been running from a posse for days on end, and the posse had continued to follow them over mountains and across rivers, and Butch and the Kid would keep looking at each other and saying, "Who ARE these guys?"

This is the way I feel whenever I keep seeing that same old reliable poll number that states that something like 30% of the American public supports Bush on his war, believes in the surge, and thinks things are going just peachy-keen over there and the rest of us morons would realize that if "the media" would just report it.

But as Bill Maher succinctly pointed out in his essay for Huffingtonpost, that 30% of the general public is made up of SEVENTY PERCENT OF REPUBLICANS who still stubbornly maintain that we did the right thing going in, "victory" is still possible, and the so-called surge is a brilliant strategy.

These are the same people who continue to believe Dick Cheney when he appears on Rush Limbaugh THE DAY AFTER A PENTAGON REPORT IS ISSUED, in which that very report stated without doubt that there was no connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein before the war, the exact same conclusion drawn by the Iraq Study Report and reported in numerous Congressional studies--he went on that very next day and stated, once again, that indeed, THERE WAS a connection between al-Qaeda and Hussein.

You remember who the Kool-Aid drinkers were, don't you?  In maniacal cult-leader Jim Jones's jungle hideaway, they were the 900 or so followers who not only drank Kool-Aid they knew was poisoned, but also poisoned their own children, simply because their Dear Leader had told them to.

These gung-ho seventy-percenters are the same ones who were so rabid to go to war that they crucified genuine war heroes like Max Cleland and John Kerry and yes, John McCain, in order to get their own Dear Leader into office.  The same ones who cheered the big MISSION ACCOMPLISHED moment, the same ones who called the building insurgency "dead-enders," who swore it was in its "last throes" and who said the invasion would be a "cake-walk," who assured us they knew RIGHT WHERE TO FIND those wicked weapons of mass destruction, and who tried to destroy the reputations and good names of anyone who disagreed as being traitors to the cause and haters of their own country.

Now we're going on five years of this meat-grinding bloodbath; our military is being stretched to the breaking point, we've lost thousands and seen tens of thousands of brave Americans killed and wounded, a country has been destroyed, and all we have succeeded in doing is unleashing the demons from hell who have proceeded to slaughter and devour one another and anyone who gets in their way.  Like 18-year old troops fresh out of boot camp and less than an hour into combat guard duty.

Have you seen Laura Bush, so calm, so genteel, in her sweet quiet voice, insisting that there is all sorts of "good things happening" in Iraq that are not being reported by that bad, bad "media."

So far, there have been almost 100 journalists killed in Iraq trying to report that good news.  Those who survived must endure repeated kidnapping attempts on them and their crews, translators, and drivers.  They risk their lives each and every day they even get out of bed.  And what do they get for their trouble?

A Sunday stroll through the Baghdad market with a 60 Minutes camera crew, a fantasyland press conference, and continued petulant criticism that all they seem to want to do is report the murder, madness, and mayhem that surrounds them each and every day of their lives.

What is most harmful about the Never-Never land of happily ever after promoted by the Republican Talking Machine is not just the hundreds, if not thousands, more Americans who are doomed to their deaths because of it in the next two years.

It is that, in their insistence that, against all evidence to the contrary, THEY ARE RIGHT, then they must then proclaim anyone who disagrees with that, WRONG.  For us or against us.  Our friend or our enemy.

Period.

And in order to paint themselves more firmly into that corner, they come up with all these damaging slogans like, "retreat and defeat," and they throw around words like "surrender."

These are the same people, mind you, who cannot tell the honest difference between "diplomacy" and "appeasement."  Although we had a red-phone hotline with Moscow all through the Cold War, and maintained embassies in the USSR that whole time--these hard-liners still insist that we cannot talk to our "enemies" like Iran and Syria because to do so would be dangerous "appeasement."

This is utter nonsense.

And the HARM is that, this kind of sloganeering PREVENTS any kind of common-sense step-down of hostilities that could bring about peace with honor.  Instead, it regards anything less than "full-bore" staying of the course as DEFEAT.

In other words, DO IT OUR WAY OR YOU LOSE.

What a horrific travesty for our young men and women in uniform.

Don't think they don't know it, either.  Not only is the Army losing many valuable NCO's and sergeants, bailing out after ten or fifteen years' experience, but they can't hold junior officers either.  Even West Point graduates, many of whom usually go on to make careers out of the Army, are bailing out in droves when their five-year commitment is over.

This is because, in order to sustain this dangerous fairy tale fantasy, in order to pour all these troops and munitions into an ill-fated escalation, we have to use and abuse our brave troops like so much cannon fodder. 

They are forced to extend enlistments when their contracts are up--something called "stop-loss" that John Kerry pointed out three years ago, amounts to a "back-door draft."  They are being held in when they want to retire.  They are being forced to remain in combat for months past their expected homecomings.  They are being sent over before they are even fully trained--150 troops sent over as part of this "surge" are raw recruits straight out of boot camp.  And they are being yanked away from home and being sent back again and again and again.

How...in the name of God...is this in any way SUPPORTING THE TROOPS?

No.  It is supporting only the elaborate fairy tale that the Republicans-in-Denial are telling themselves.  AND DON'T KID YOURSELF.  THIS "SURGE" HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MILITARY STRATEGY AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS.

Bush is determined to drag this war out until  he leaves office, so that he can turn it over to his successor and then blame him--or her--for the disaster that is going to follow no matter what we do.

No matter how many people die.

Johnson prolonged a war so he wouldn't be the "first American president to lose a war."  Nixon prolonged a war so he could get re-elected.

It's ALWAYS about politics.  And I hope they all burn in hell for it.

In the meantime, as long as we are being held hostage by the Never-Never Land war pirates, the only thing we can do is continue a groundswell of REALISM.  Common sense solutions. 

"I just want this to end," said one Army wife to a reporter while her children screamed in the background.  It won't end for her for a long time yet, because her husband is one of thousands being forced to stay past their June Homecoming so that Peter Pan Bush can continue spinning his fables.

He won't end it.  He can't end it.  To end it would be to wake up from his Peter Pan dream, look around him, and realize that he is a grown-up.

That leaves it up to the rest of us to write a new ending.