Bush's Veto of Congress' Health Care Plan

Bush has called a congressional plan to provide medical coverage for children currently in between Medicare and other health plans "irresponsible" and has promised to veto it.

I haven't investigated the particulars of the plan. I do believe we need to make major changes in the American health care system, but we also need to make sure someone can pay for whatever changes we might make. Bush has no better answer.

But it is hypocritical in the extreme for Bush to say a word about irresponsible uses of funds in the face of his frivolous war and Sec. of Defense Gates' trip to Congress this week for yet more billions well beyond the billions already budgeted. Whether wise or not, at least Congress is asking for funds that would actually help someone. Bush's war has helped no one, but it has killed or maimed tens of thousands who would otherwise be living, and that with their limbs in tact.

Bush's Post Petraeus Speech Tonight

Bush did what he should have done tonight--put the most positive spin on Iraq and his coming actions that he could. So we all know that he has to begin downsizing the troop levels. So he has portrayed that decrease as a consequence of success in the surge. Good political tact. At the same time, of course, they are only going to decrease to what they were before the surge at this point. Little consolation. But rather than such withdrawal looking like failed policy, he can pin it on the success of his actions. He's not conceding to Baker-Hamilton. Look, he did it his way and was right and can now begin some withdrawal.

Has the surge brought success? I believe it has made the situation in Iraq better, yes. The real question is whether it has made it better in the long term or only because there are more troops there right now to police things. Time will tell.

Let us rejoice with what seems to have happened in the Anbar province. It does indeed seem good news that the Sunnis have turned on the elements whose main purpose is to fight us. But of course Anbar is not a Sunni-Shiite, mixed place with a lot of civil war going on. The biggest problem in Iraq by far is not those there to fight us. It is the civil war going on between Sunnis and Shiites.

By the way, remember how hard the Bush administration fought against that label--civil war? Publically we have had nothing but denial after denial. Well, only 20 some % of Americans actually believe Bush's spin now. These are either the enlightened ones or the expected small group who wouldn't change their minds if the truth came up and bit them on the ... nose.

But as a Christian, and as an American, I have to hope that it works out. My human side wants Bush to be held accountable for a frivilous war that has cost us thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives, not to mention billions of dollars and the moral high ground vis-a-vis the world.

But I have to hope that, against all expectations, Iraq and the Middle East will be a better place in the end. We have to hope that Bush can gloat about how the Iraqi government became unified and the sectarian violence came to an end. I have to hope that things will begin to go so well that he can try to rub it in my face. "Look at how wonderful life in Iraq is now. It truly is better than it was under Saddam Hussein."

I hope we can say that one day, in the same way that a teenage pregnancy can result in the birth of a wonderful person that we would never wish had not been born. But the facts of the beginning of the war cannot be changed.

• That Bush launched an inappropriate preemptive war without prerequisites long established for over 1000 years. He did it on the basis of a overarching strategy for the middle east first and only secondarily because of Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. Without provocation, Hussein would not even have been a sufficient basis for going to war. Those who don't learn from history...
• That this war was a diversion that had nothing concrete to do with 9-11 or terrorists or Al Qaeda. We should have continued to pursue bin Laden. This was a switch-a-roo to accomplish side goals.
• That Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld launched this war with naive, utopian visions of Western freedom, thinking we probably would not lose much more than a 100 troops as they flocked to our ideals for them. Oops.
• That we are not "fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them here." The terrorists in Iraq are not the 9-11 terrorists and they only joined to Al Qaeda after the war had started. I doubt what we have done in Iraq has diverted a single terrorist plot here in America.
• That our moral influence in the rest of the world is nil, that we have only pushed people away from the Christianity they associate with America. Rest assured no nation will be signing up for us to help them get freedom any time soon.

History will not be kind to President Bush.

Signed, a Republican