BACKING DOWN

Once more, the demies have have thrown in the towel on the Iraq funding bill-- Once more, the most weakened major political leader in the entire world subtracting Anthony (Poodle)Blair busy publicizing himself rock-star style with a farewell resignation-tour, and, of course, the ever irresponsible Ehud (3%) Olmert and possibly, according to recent open-source intel out of Pakistan, the popularity-challenged Pervez Musharrif, Mr. Bush has manage to cower the less than laughing-stock demies into abject surrender with a veto threat leaving no datelines for troop pullout in the immediate offing-- That a man incapable of whipping the Euro-liberals at the World Bank decimates these demies with such remarkable ease is strange testimony to the power vacuum enveloping the entire DC echelon--


Forty-seven Republicans, one independent and 19 Democrats voted with Jimmy Carter's favorite Prez, none of whom on the nominal demie's side were presidential candidates but chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the Israeli Senator from Michigan, Carl Levin kept the faith with his AIPAC handlers siding with the Lieberman ilk-- Harry Reid had the unmitigated temerity to denounce the Republican plan as weak and timid-- Non-binding demie cowardice hard at work-- No wonder positive congessional poll numbers of late have sunk like a stone--

Meanwhile fifteen more American troops had their young lives snuffed out over the weekend last-- The Sunni insurgents continue their Surge options more effectively than most American officials willingly admit-- Hundreds of bystanders have recently been slaughtered by insurgent car bomb attacks plied with increasingly sophisticated technique and for all intents and purposes a relative impunity that openly mocks the Bush security plans-- Iraqi security forces manning evermore checkpoints reportedly stop certain vehicles and beg for more bullets--


Market bombs which killed 140 people have an illustrious tendency to force reports detailing incessant mortar attacks against important targets such as The Green Zone or the Airport off the home pages of most news sites-- Few politicians see any hope of building a name for themselves invoking lines of cautious optimism once so prevalent at the Surge's initial foray into the slums of Baghdad-- How long can Moqtada Sadr order his militia to stand down while under-manned under-armored American forces fail to prevent ongoing Sunni butchery??-- The facts on the ground speak way beyond the charade of political dogma so rife in DC and they do not currently bode success much less chosen Victory-- How many months into the Surge so far??-- A Colonel struggles with the double-bladed logistics of faux optimism and reminds everyone the Surge is not yet 'fully-staffed'-- Well,........ Why not??--


The air of futility, the demies' maladroit skill engenders to display in broad daylight, reverberates across the dispirited country mirrored by the cloud of exhaustion and acute despair permeating the disintegration of Iraq-- Not just a country at singular civil war but one enduring multiple civil wars locally, regionally, and in some cases, inter-tribally-- The Iraqi government, strangely enough being supported by both Iran and the US, is increasingly irrelevant across much of its own terrain-- No government earns legitimacy by failing to deliver security and services-- The Iraqi government lacks real authority and it is incapable of serving its own people-- The canard that chaos will overrun the country should we pull-out belies the intense pervasive chaos and lack of structural, political and social cohesion manifesting already-- Accepting extant reality doesn't appear to be an option--