Each day is another chance to ... make the same damn mistakes

There have been a couple of landmarks over the past weeks in terms of body count in the Iraq war. Of course, everyone by now knows that we’ve surpassed the 2500th U.S. soldier killed in Iraq (just a number according to the White House), and now we have a report that at least 50,000 Iraqi’s have died violently since the invasion [1], a number still thought to be undercounted but at least 20,000 higher than previously admitted by Team Chimpy.

The toll, which is mostly of civilians but probably also includes some security forces and insurgents, is daunting: Proportionately, it is equivalent to 570,000 Americans being killed nationwide in the last three years.

The Dems have been hammering for a while that the war is a pit of quicksand and a phased withdrawal is in order. The failure to produce any fabled Zarqawi “bounce” lends credence to the publics burgeoning awareness that the White House is a sinking ship on this issue. Biden was on Blitzer the other day defending the proposals with this little gem [2]:

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The worst possible thing we could do is what the Democrats are suggesting, and no matter how you carve it, you can call it anything you want, but basically, it is packing it in, going home, persuading and convincing and validating the theory that the Americans don't have the stomach for this fight.

BLITZER: All right. You want to respond to the vice president, Senator Biden?

BIDEN: No, I don't want to respond to him. He's at 20 percent in the polls. No one listens to him. He has no credibility. It's ridiculous.

Although the GOP has been rank and file [3] behind the White House, there has been a surprising retreat on their position in almost the very same weak they defeated to Democratic bills calling for an end to the war.

The first is the rather curious support the GOP is giving to amnesty despite all previous rhetorical saber-rattling to the contrary. Now that the rumors have turned out to be true [4], Bush’s Iraq is worse [5] than it was under Hussein, and there is no sign of it improving [6] in the foreseeable future, the talking heads are making their rounds in support [7]of the proposal, while some [8] among the GOP [9] appear to be flip-flopping [10] on the issue depending [8] on their audience.

The second is that the Democrats have revealed a report [11] from General Casey, the commander in Iraq:

Senate Democrats reacted angrily yesterday to a report that the U.S. commander in Iraq had privately presented a plan for significant troop reductions in the same week they came under attack by Republicans for trying to set a timetable for withdrawal.

In the political context of “Reality,” it would appear that the Democrats are not only in sync with the American people, but also the military leadership. One would assume this would translate into a big win for the Dems this year. However, the LA Times [12] has a different take:

Last week, Congress debated two Democratic proposals that called for Bush to begin a troop drawdown, resolutions that divided the party. Public acknowledgment of the Casey plan by administration officials could leave the Democratic Party's leaders in an even more awkward position, having backed a withdrawal plan already embraced by the White House — in effect leaving the party with no Iraq policy distinct from the administration's as the parties head into the midterm elections.

So basically, the Dems have been hammering withdrawal for months, the GOP majority overrules them, and the Dems come off as losers. Now the GOP is starting to realize that the Dems were right all along, they present the exact same plan, and the Dems come off as – losers!

Kudos to the MSM for presenting this story completely devoid of historical context. They’re like Drew Barrymore in “50 First Dates;” no short-term memory. They wake up every morning with all of the previous days events simply washed away.