Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Bush admitted his administration has made some mistakes regarding Iraq, but said people should not blame U.S. troops for the problems there. "We've got a bunch of good military people out there doing what we asked them to do. The temptation is to find scapegoats," he said. "Well if the people want a scapegoat they've got one right here in me."

No, Mr. President. No one asked if the troops were doing their best or not. You were asked if YOUR administration had made mistakes. If YOU had made mistakes. Grabbing a pregnant woman and holding her in front of you to protect yourself from this bullet won't work!

And, calling yourself a scapegoat means that you really don't think YOU are to blame! Let's look at the definition from our friends at dictionary.com:

Scapegoat: a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place.

No, Mr. President, you are NOT a scapegoat. You're the decider! You listen to all the best advice from your generals on the ground and then YOU decide. Isn't that what you've told the American people over and over and over again?

Well, let's look at some of those decisions:

1. Invade a country that posed no threat.
   
2. Invade that country with too few troops to secure the peace.
   
3. Allow Iraq to be looted, ammo dumps to go unguarded, and borders to be completely unprotected, which helped create and arm a nasty insurgency.
   
4. Fire the entire standing Iraqi army and most civil servants (creating a million man swamp of insurgents and disabling any public services from functioning - especially water, electricity, and garbage collection).
   
5. Hand no-bid contracts to crooks and liars which kept any real reconstruction from happening in Iraq and unemployment of Iraqis to add another 3 million people to the swamp of insurgents.

But the Whiner in Chief isn't the only one to use this tactic. A while back when Condi Rice was asked if mistakes were made, she responded that 'thousands of tactical mistakes' were made on the ground. She, in fact, WAS blaming the military.

Thank goodness we have a new attitude in Congress that won't allow folks like Condi to get away with such statements without at least a stammering, spittle-flying, red-faced representative sputtering a follow-up question. If only we could get the press to have a bit more of the same.