Not perfect.

The military establishment went to Congress this week to argue for that fat supplemental spending package Bush requested for the Iraq and Afghan wars. The air was thick with dire warnings. We don't have enough troops to defend the nation against attack. Half of the army's equipment is tied up. Without some $200 billion more in supplemental funding, civilian workers at military bases all across the country will be laid off for the holidays. How's that for rattling their little brass cup? I'll tell you, $470 billion per annum just doesn't buy what it used to. Seriously... you'd think with a budget of that magnitude, the Pentagon could find a way to keep both of Bush's phony wars going and still send all those defense department civilian employees home with a holiday bonus. So cancel a couple of useless weapons programs - you could do it with your eyes closed.

I mean, isn't this exactly why you don't start wars for no good reason - because they're costly in about a dozen different ways? Now we're hearing from the generals about how thin the army is stretched, how they need more money, more soldiers, more gear.... and yet no one seems interested in attaching blame to this seemingly authorless crisis. Sure, there's plenty of blame to go around. Just look at that rostrum full of Democratic candidates for president. Out of eight, there's only one of them - Kucinich - who was actually faced with the decision whether or not to support Bush's war plan and turned it down. The rest either weren't in Congress in 2002 (talk is cheap) or voted for the resolution (who's sorry now?). They bear substantial responsibility, but the ones who planned this war and deliberately stoked the fires of fear in advance of it are primarily at fault. Now that more than 3,800 Americans are dead, thousands wounded, upwards of a million Iraqis dead, 4.5 million made refugees, plus a ballooning military budget already blown, it's about time we talked about calling these people out. But aside from Kucinich's impeachment articles, no one seems to have the stomach for it.

Of course, now that the catastrophe has already occurred in Iraq, the war's defenders are trying to cast the smoking ruins of that nation as a panorama of victory. (Spoiler alert: the war's serial hardships will be blamed on those who were against it from the very beginning - stay tuned.) Seems like every time I hear a report from an embedded reporter with a U.S. patrol somewhere in "Indian country", some public affairs officer will at some point pipe up with the comment that while things in Iraq are "not perfect," they're better than they were. Not perfect? Who sent that piece of copy down the firing line? Is that some not-too-subtle way of suggesting that the American people expect too much of this mission? Trust me, Mr. President, no one is anticipating "perfection", though it could very well be that, by Bush's standards, we're getting pretty close. After all - the goal here is to establish permanent bases in Iraq, and they are doing it. Their manifest indifference to the suffering of others - Iraqi and American alike - merely indicates that such hardship is immaterial to reaching that goal. Just one of many costs to be taken into account.

So, in a sense, it looks as though a hardy "mission accomplished" is in order after all. This is the kind of lack of perfection Bush, Cheney, and crew can comfortably live with.

luv u,

jp