With the death of Bush’s immigration bill (again) there is nothing left for Bush to accomplish this year in Congress. He has no legislative agenda left. In fact, his second term may lapse with nothing more than an unconstitutional military detention bill to show for legislative accomplishment. Like it or not, Bush is currently in an epic collapse. And it is just at this moment that he finds himself in a full blown crisis. Obey congressional subpoenas and he’ll be thrown out on his ass, but disobey them and he spends the rest of his term in office losing court battles to an increasingly hostile Congress.
This is no way to run a country, especially one caught on the flypaper of Iraq.
Twenty decapitated bodies were found today in a predominantly Sunni village southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi police said.
The grisly discovery was made on a bloody day across Iraq. A car bomb killed 25 people and wounded 40 others in a busy intersection in the mostly Shiite Bayaa district in Baghdad today. And the casualty count from an attack on Wednesday in Kadhimiya, another Shiite neighborhood, rose to 10 dead and 17 wounded.
In Basra, a roadside bomb killed three British soldiers and wounded another, Reuters reported.
At 26% in the polls, Bush is in no position to argue that we need to continue policing this catastrophe.
The Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is certainly not convinced:
In my judgment, the current surge strategy is not an effective means of protecting these interests. Its prospects for success are too dependent on the actions of others who do not share our agenda. It relies on military power to achieve goals that it cannot achieve. It distances allies that we will need for any regional diplomatic effort. Its failure, without a careful transition to a back-up policy would intensify our loss of credibility. It uses tremendous amounts of resources that cannot be employed in other ways to secure our objectives. And it lacks domestic support that is necessary to sustain a policy of this type.
Lugar is saying that we have vital interests at play in the Middle East and we cannot afford to run out the clock on this administration. They must change course or we’re in for some really serious problems. But the Republicans are learning that the Bush administration couldn’t be effective at this point even if they did change course. How can an administration be effective if they are bogged down in hopeless court cases trying to avoid oversight? Bush and Cheney have no credibility left.
As I said way back in Novemeber, when Bush blew off the Baker-Hamilton report, impeachment now has a kind of inexorable logic. It seems that wisdom is finally, slowly, starting to dawn on some people.
The death of the immigration bill (again) signals the death knell for any presidential relevancy whatsoever. He has no further utility to his party or his nation. They should be swept out of office this summer.