On Vetos, Staying the Course, and other assorted follies

Just when you think it can't get any more silly, we have this:

The President vetoing,as
promised, the spending bill containing a timetable for withdrawal.

on the grounds that to do so would "send a signal to the terrorists." How about to the over 3100 Americans who've died in Iraq to date? What signal does it send to continue the war in perpetuity?


Here, for example, some American solider prepare to cross the street in Barbouq; takes a while to prepare the way. Glad the war is going so well, and that continued progress is being made, as the President has repeatedly assured us over the past four years.

The Al-Sarafiyah bridge in Baghdad on April 11th, 2007, after being blown up. Another clear sign of progress.

Transportation a bit more difficult in Baghdad when the minibuses keep exploding.


These aren't the happy Iraqis we were told would greet American troops upon invasion.

And the Iraqi agony we rarely see or hear about, except in the obscene term, "collateral damage"--two women wait to claim the body of a relative in Kirkuk, murdered in the sectarian violence we've unleashed.

These samples of images are all from one month, including the President's veto, signed four years to the day after his "Mission Accomplished" speech in San Diego Harbor.

The further, most recent obscenity: the train of Republican lawmakers repeating the party talking point, "if we put a timetable on the war, the terrorists will just follow our troops home, and we'll see increased violence and terrorist attacks in the United States." All the intelligence briefings (at least the ones that made public) say exactly the opposite: it is our presence in Iraq that creates terrorists, and terrorists plotting against the United States, both in Iraq and on North American soil. Have the party loyalists, to borrow a phrase from the McCarthy hearings of a half century ago, no shame? Have they, at long last, no shame?