So Much For Those Rose-Colored Pentagon Glasses…
The reality on the ground in Iraq and what it means for members of the American military and their families is that things have to change. That troops and their loved ones are already stretched far too thin hit home for military brass.
Despite the tap dancing PR maneuver with a half twist that the Bush White House tried to pull over the eyes of the American public and press, troop rotations have got to be shorter tours because our service members cannot take much more strain. And neither can their families.
Due to what can only be described as a freak moment of public honesty, or an attempt to take one for the team, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates goes for the Alighieri Award:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he has abandoned hope that troop levels in Iraq will drop to 100,000 by the end of the year.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here? Purgatorio, anyone? Pick a level, any level.
Just don’t tell anyone it’s divine — the public just doesn’t seem to be buying it any more. Or much of anything else, given the state of the US economy. With the drain on the public trough that is Bush’s forever war, the forecast is more crumbling schools and bridges, and a whole lot less of everything else, as we pitch our tax dollars into the never-ending conflict inferno, where bad policy decisions insure we’ll be paying off our debts — monetary, ethical and otherwise — for generations to come. Tighten those belts, kids, we are in for a continued bumpy ride.
Just another day in the Bush paradiso, eh?
(Domenico di Michelino, Portrait de Dante Alighieri, la ville de Florence et l’allégorie de la Divine Comédie, 1465. Tempera sur toile, 232 × 290 cm. Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence. H/T Atrios)
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