For some time now, the majority of catters have been warning about the bust that is our military involvement in the Middle East. These catters have been warning a few others here who steadfastly refused to believe what was in front of their faces every night on the news and chose to believe the lies and distortions of the man who started the mess. They even repeated him parrot-like insisting we were winning and no extra troops would be needed, their lord and master in the White House said so.

My question to them is: "So how do you like him now?" Of course, I'm sure some of them are insisting nothing has changed but, of course, everything has changed. George W. Bush finally admitted that our disgusting, unlawful and unethical occupation of Iraq--er, I mean, our gallant war on terrorism--isn't going very well. I believe he put it, "We're not winning, we're not losing." And, naturally, his shills and parrots will shout this to the moon and back until 2008 rolls around and we're getting ready to flee.

For the record, there's no such thing for us as "not winning but not losing." We've invested 3000+ lives and climbing and some $350 billion and have nothing whatsoever to show for it. I would call that losing. What Bush means is, we can stonewall the inevitable as long as we maintain a presence there. But surely even he knows that we can't stay there much longer. He also knows there can be no drawdown of troops because if levels fall too low, it will be no different than cutting and running and the inevitable takeover of Iraq by those we never ever wanted to see come to power under any circumstances, the very terrorists this war was supposed to destroy.

These shills and parrots echoed their master's insistence that more troops were not needed, that they would only complicate the situation. But today, Bush admitted to just that--we need more troops over there or forget it. Now, even the military people who stood so stalwartly behind him are FINALLY realizing they are fighting for their survival BECAUSE of Bush rather than in spite of him. These shills will continue to talk about how Clinton "pussified" our military and it's about time they had a real war to whip us into shape but the sad truth is, our military was much, much stronger under Clinton than Bush.

And I have to wonder if these shills will talk about a "temporary" increase of 20,000 to 30,000 troops to quell the violence (this will be--what?--the THIRD time we've tried this?) while ignoring the ugly, shocking truth the Pentagon itself has already admitted:

We don't have another 20,000 to 30,000 troops to spare. Another 15,000 or so will drain our pool of combat-ready troops. So now, they're talking about expanding the military before, as Colin Powell has pointed out, it gets "broken" by Bush's abuse. So rather than admit that the draft is inevitable, they talk this disarming garbage about bringing in more reserves. Folks, they're called reserves for a reason. Picture our military as a closed system like a car's engine and fuel system. What does the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics teach us about closed systems? If you don't pump in outside energy (or free energy), the energy in the closed system goes from order to disorder, i.e. it runs down if you don't keep putting gas in the tank. Even if you install a reserve tank for just such an emergency, you must still find a source of free energy or the system will eventually run down. That's what Bush is doing now--he's going to tap into that reserve tank and he will empty it in no time and then what?

Another option is gunboat diplomacy. Send the Navy with its fearsome warships to the Persian Gulf to reinforce our position. The trouble is, this is just retread of shock & awe which was such a failure that were the results not so tragic would be hilarious. Gunboats amount to lean stripped-down heavily armed fighting units which was the Rumsfeld-Franks-Bush (the triumvirate of sheer incompetance) new model army and it was the emperor's new clothes all over again. Failed to impress anyone but conservative ninnies, shills, and administration sycophants (who unfortunately appeared to be mainly composed of Pentagon brass). Everyone else stood there saying, "I don't see it." Now Bush is admitting in his coy way that there was really nothing there to see in the first place. It was telling you something was there and if you disagreed you were a terrorist sympathizer. Too many idiots interpreted this as patriotism instead of the obvious demogoguery that it is. And we're paying for our idiocy.

Well, so far they are proposing $170 billion for the war next year ($100 billion of it for Afghanistan which looks worse than Iraq and that pricetag proves it) which would bring our total to $520 billion--already exceeding the total cost of Vietnam and having far less to show for it.

Now not even Bush's military ass-kissers side with him anymore. He wants to send more troops and they say no--it won't do any good since we've already done this several times now and it has never worked. It's like that saying of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is lunacy. Welcome to Bush's lunacy. One of Bush's biggest supporters who has defected on him is Gen. John Abizaid who opposes sending more troops. Not surprisingly, he just announced his retirement to take effect early next year.

Has it dawned on you shills that Bush has lied to you? Do you see that now? He fed you bullshit and you willingly swallowed it and begged for more. But now what do you get for singing his song? Nothing. He's now dropped that song and is singing the one you attacked "liberals" for holding--that we're not winning and we need more troops if we're going to have a chance to win. Do you really think that he only just now realized Iraq is a wash since November 7th or do you think he probably knew it a lot earlier? That makes you see how insane he is. He was going to continue with this failed policy for as long as the people would let him get away with it. He knew it wasn't working and he refused to do anything about it. If that's lunacy, it is criminal lunacy.