The House of Representatives and the White House were lawyering up in preparation for investigations. The White House’s first move was to dump Harriet Miers as White House council. Seems that the best candidate for the Supreme Court isn’t good enough to defend the Administration’s actions in Iraq, signing statements, no bid contracts and any number of constitutional violations. Nope, cronyism is good enough to get a SCOTUS nomination, but when it comes to covering the Criminal in Chief’s @$$ she gets dropped like a hot potato.
Then there’s the issue of listening to the commanders on the ground in Iraq. Early on when Gen. Zinni said they’d need 200,000 troops he suddenly retired to spend more time with his family. When commanders on the ground didn’t have enough troops to guard the oil fields and the ammo dumps Bush couldn’t hear them. Now that it’s too late and the existing troops are nothing but IED bait the Dumbass in Chief is rearranging the command structure to get somebody who agrees with an escalation. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously said it is a bad idea; a dozen retired generals have said it’s a bad idea; Gen. Casey, current CENTCOM, didn’t like the idea so he’s being bought off with a promotion to Army Chief of Staff and a Navy Admiral is put in charge of desert warfare. Did I just say that a Navy Admiral was in charge of desert warfare? This just gets more surreal every day.
Fortunately the Grownups are in charge of the purse strings now. John Murtha, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, said the checkbook is closed until he sees justification for increased spending on Iraq and a clear and achievable mission. The Majority Leaders of both houses of Congress have sent a letter to Dubya giving him advanced warning that an increase in troops will not be supported and that he should begin re-deploying troops in the next few months. They did Bush the courtesy of warning him before he announces his “new way forward”. If he acts responsibly he will announce next week that after hearing all advice he has decided not to add more troops. Not likely with a Caribbean Island named after him: the No Sense Atoll.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Oversight.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Dems scheduling hearings
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/04/AR2007010400778.html Miers steps down
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/05/us.iraq/index.html Navy Admiral in charge of desert troops
BTW, my crystal ball show a constitutional crisis between Dubya and the Congress over his signing statements within a year.