President Bush and his administration have ramped up the rhetoric this week as they seek to redirect the debate on the war in Iraq. In an attempt to get on the offensive and have the last word as both Congress and the President headed home for an Easter break Mr. Bush reeled off a litany of obfuscations, distortions, and falsities on Tuesday. All of which reveal Mr. Bush and his Administration as increasingly cut off from reality.
Mr. Bush continues to claim, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, that his so-called surge of soldiers in Iraq is "making a difference." While attacks in Baghdad have decreased recently, there has been a corresponding and devastating increase in violence elsewhere in Iraq. The massive truck bombings and subsequent revenge killings in the northern city of Tal Afar last week are but one disturbing example. As the Washington Post reported yesterday, the second three weeks of the 'surge' have not shown a decrease in the violence throughout Iraq:
Mr. Bush proceeded to complain that Congress is taking too long to pass the emergency spending that the Administration has requested to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Specifically Mr. Bush pointed out that 57 days had passed since he first requested the emergency funds. 57 days may seem like quite a long time, however it is significantly less time than it took the Republican controlled 109th Congress in either 2005 or 2006 to approve similar emergency spending bills. In 2005 86 days passed before Congress approved funds and in 2006 Mr. Bush met a 119 day delay with praise. Less than half of that time has now passed and Mr. Bush intimates that the delay is hurting American soldiers and their families.
Mr. Bush also alleged that money supporting soldiers in Iraq will begin to run out in mid-April. The independent Congressional Research Service has reported that this is not the case. In fact the military has significant funding available to last until at least the end of May and could free up enough funds for additional one to two months if needed.
If Mr. Bush and his administration were genuinely concerned with making sure that the war in Iraq remains fully funded they could have included funding for it in the federal budget, instead of attempting to disguise the wars true price by funding it piecemeal through emergency spending legislation.
Mr. Bush and his supporters have also taken to complaining about the attachment of unrelated domestic spending, aka 'pork', to the war funding legislation. Several times on Tuesday alone Mr. Bush demanded that Congress send him a "clean bill." This belies the fact that the past several bills funding the wars have also included large amounts of 'pork', much of it added by Republicans and Mr. Bush himself.
Another current complaint popular among war supporters is that Congress should not mettle with battlefield decisions best left to commanders on the ground. This complaint forgets and obscures the fact that Mr. Bush changed the commanders on the ground in order to place supporters of his 'surge' plan in command.
On Tuesday Mr. Bush asserted, as war supporters continue to do, that the American public does not support a time-line for withdrawal from Iraq. At this point, given current polling results, it is difficult to make a more patently false statement. A strong majority of Americans favor a plan to withdrawal all soldiers from Iraq by the end of this year, let alone 2008 as currently proposed by Congress.
Mr. Bush's favorite talking point is that the Democrats in Congress are failing to 'support the troops' by passing supplemental funding for the war that sets a time-line for withdrawal. Mr. Bush claims that if Congress does not send him a bill he can sign the soldiers in Iraq will be endangered. Mr. Bush said on Tuesday:
Congress's most basic responsibility is to give our troops the equipment and training they need to fight our enemies and protect our nation. They're now failing in that responsibility, and if they do not change course in the coming weeks, the price of that failure will be paid by our troops and their loved ones.
When Congress and Mr. Bush return from their spring recesses next week Congress will send a bill to the White House that fully funds and supports the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. If Mr. Bush vetoes this bill, as he has promised to do, it will be Mr. Bush who has denied funding to the American soldiers that he has sent into harm's way and cut off funding for the war. In his own rhetoric Mr. Bush will have failed to 'support the troops.'
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