War Hags

AFP/Mark Wilson

The GOP, or the war hag party, is having a grand old time this week painting the democrats as the party of "retreat and defeat." Really, have you ever seen a bunch of old geezers that enjoys the thought of death and destruction more? I wish they could all look at this photograph and try to remember that every headstone represents one family who has been shattered by the death of a soldier. As Atrios says this morning, it's all about using the soldiers as props in an election year.

How cynical. How utterly appalling. The NY Times has the details of the GOP's rush to embrace the clusterfuck resulting from Bush's disastrous war in Iraq;

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.

Two points. First, we're going to hand the US a defeat? Bush has done that with his astoundingly incompetent handling of the war. Second point, what the fuck is the pentagon doing using our tax dollars to produce what's essentially a political document?

Instead of running from this issue, democrats should embrace it and hang it around every republican running for office like a two-ton anchor. The argument should be, "do you really want to keep spending $8 billion a month and killing american soldiers in this endless mis-adventure? The president says the troops are never coming home as long as they're in charge. Do you want the troops home? Then you must vote these incompetent and delusional clowns out of office."

They are standing with the president to a man.

Let's make them pay for it.