Abandon ship!

The rats are starting to abandon George Bush's "Iraq War Ship", but the skipper has the sails pulled in tight, and so far he is holding his course.

Ten GOP senators are now moving toward the side of the Democrats who are pushing for the U.S. to begin redeployment's. Who knows what effect a vote in the Senate to "redeploy" will have. The House may follow suit, but what will happen then? I was a young man when the drums of defeat were beating in the press over the Vietnam War...there are definitely some parallels now. What baffles me is that General Petraeus was confirmed in the Senate 81-0, and the Senators knew he would be in charge of the "surge". They knew it would take until late spring to get all the surge troops in place, and all General Petraeus asked was, "Give me until September". Here we are in early July and the rats are ready to jump ship. Iraq is a mess, no question about it...but why won't these so-called congressional "leaders" give this brilliant general until September as they promised?

The pundits on each side have different theories...


The Democrats want out of Iraq immediately saying that: "The war is lost, violence is getting worse, the Iraqi military and police forces are not trained yet, the Iraqi government is not stepping up, and one more loss of an American life is too many". They may be right.


The Republican Bush supporters (plus the lone independent Joe Lieberman) are saying: "It will get worse before it gets better, but the surge is working. They point to the fact that many Sunni tribal leaders are turning against Al Queda, and the insurgents are moving to much "softer" and geographically remote targets, because of US army and Iraqi army pressure . The Republicans say the mainstream press and the Democrats are "invested in defeat" in Iraq, and they hate Bush so much they will do anything to see him lose. They also say the Democrats will suffer a huge political defeat if General Patraeus turns around the situation in Iraq". They may be right.


So the skipper of the ship is sailing into some very strong headwinds and rough water, and some of his crew are lowering the lifeboats and want off. If you look at history, this is when some presidents have looked around, and no one was there. A true test of leadership. As I say above, "Both sides could be right"...so George Bush may be a lonely man on this issue.


The few people that read this blog know that I am a Conservative Republican and most of the time a Bush supporter. Surprise...I was against the Iraq war from the beginning - I did not feel that Saddam Hussein's life was worth one American, and I thought the last thing this country should do was to spend 500 billion dollars to send this guy to Allah. I felt we could control him as a "tin pot" dictator using "the no fly zone", and our superior air power, which could destroy any new suspected military or nuclear research targets. Ask my son Mike, he was on the USS Ranger during the first Gulf War which was a total victory with almost no loss of life, but using a lot of cruise missiles.


But we are in Iraq, it is a mess, and what is done is done, so what should we do? Anyone that thinks terrorism is "overstated" has their head in the sand. We saw an example of that just last week in England. And my wife and I, and our grand kids saw the results of Islamic terrorism when we visited the World Trade center site in NYC last year. These terrorists will not leave us alone, even if we "jump ship" in Iraq.

So rather that throw "political bombs' at each other, let's pray that George Bush, General Petraeus, and all the decision makers that will plot this ships course the next few months will have the wisdom and fortitude to get it right in Iraq.