So, lemme get this straight.

Bush blames Kerry for "insulting" the troops by saying he said something he didn't say, that everybody knew he didn't say and didn't mean, and it just didn't matter.

GOP Majority Leader John Boehner blames the generals and it's no laughing matter, but his attempt to say the buck stops with the guys on the ground and not Rumsfeld, or Bush, isn't criticism of the military is truly a knee-slapper.

The Army Times blame Rumsfeld. evidently missing Boehner's memo and exposing itself as a tool of the Glorious Socialist Revolution For Make Benefit Of Liberal Mainstream Media.

Chalabi blames Wolfowitz, and the rest of the "Pentagon guys" for "chickening out" -- and if they'd listened to him the Iraqis wouldn't have any foreigners to blame.  No, really.

The neo-con chickenhawks spread blame all around, and if you only look at Vanity Fair when they've got a naked pregnant celebrity on the cover, Shakes has the money quotes.  I twist the words below ...

• Richard Perle, the guy who held Chalabi's hand all over D.C., blames disloyalty within the administration.  He does this with a straight face, slamming a White House that has always valued loyalty over competence. 
  
  
• Michael Ledeen whose daughter was hired to screw up Baghdad as much as possible, blames the girls (damn those bitches).
  
  
• Former Bush speechwriter David Frume blames the National Security Council (headed by Condi Rice when he was there -- so he blames the girls too).  This from a wordsmith who says the "failure at the center" doesn't mean the President, even though he said that he was "shocked" that Bush could read the words he wrote yet not understand what he was saying.  Me too Dave.  I can't see why a man who plays 40 chess games at once would be confused by your exacting prose.
  
  
• Shakespearian scholar and Ford Administration retread Kenny "Iraq will be a cakewalk" Adelman blames the silly medals hanging around Franks, Tenant and Bremmer's necks, and Rumsfeld's altzheimers.  Ironically, Tony Snow blames medal winner Tommy Franks, not the medal itself, in defending the guy who hands out medals like pretzels -- hoping someone chokes on them.
  
  
• Michael Rubin, an expert propagandist with the usual neo-con credentials (AEI fellow, allumni of the Office of Special Plans, an advisor to Bremmer's Coalition Provisional Authority) was calling for an end to talk -- wanting no more dialogue, just military action against Afghanistan and Iraq, but also Sudan and Iran too -- one month after 9/11.  Now he blames Bush for being too much like his dad by not backing up his rhetoric with action -- and he blames the people who buy the rhetoric in the first place.  It's just propaganda, folks.
  

"The best news is that the United States remains a healthy, vibrant, vigorous society. So in a real pinch, we can still pull ourselves together. Unfortunately, it will probably take another big hit. And a very different quality of leadership. Maybe we'll get it."

Meanwhile, Powerline blames the Iraqi people for loving their own freedom more than ours, I guess.

Digby blames Powerline, Limbaugh and Malkin for writing the incomprehensible drivel they spew when they should have known that Bush actually listens to them.

Andy Card blames the NYTimes for letting everyone know that Bush listens to the guys at Powerline and published how to make a nuke on the net -- in Arabic.

Speaking of Nutjobs, LGF also blames the NYTimes for being in cahoots with the International Atomic Energy Agency by hiding the facts that Saddam knew how to build the bomb  If only they could just release those documents to the rocket scientists running blogs instead of those security risks as Los Alamos.  What?  But there's got to be something there that proves that we weren't complete fools, right?  I mean, we didn't just teach Iran how to build a bomb, did we?  Scott blames the drugs.

Bob Ney and Mark Foley did the Mel Gibson cop-out, blaming the booze for the greed and the gay pederasy.  And speaking of the lubricated love ...

Pastor Haggerd really didn't blame anyone, but his defenders blamed his fat, lazy wife.

I blame Clinton for not having the balls to claim he didn't have sex with that man, and that he didn't inhale inject the meth.  What kind of balls does it take for a Presidential spiritual advisor, head of a 30 Freaking Million person Christianist organization to admit buying drugs from a guy he said he didn't know, er, um ... only got a massage from (if that's what he wants to call it...) and threw the stuff away only to call up and ask for more.  Now that's balls.

The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.

Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

Move over Mean Jean.  There's another congressman who wants to take your place as the stupidest representative to ever insult a G.I.

Demotion to Minority Leader isn't enough for this embarrassment to all of Ohio, or even losing his leadership position to become a backbencher (which he rightly deserves).  He shouldn't ever get elected dog catcher again.

GOP HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER JOHN BOEHNER: Let's not blame what's happening in Iraq on Rumsfeld.

WOLF BLITZER: But he's in charge of the military.

BOEHNER: But the fact is, the generals on the ground are in charge, and he works closely with them and the president.

If this will be known as the year of the Democratic Tsunami.  2008 should be the Great GOP Purge if this guy remains the face of the Republican Party leadership.

If you don't study, work hard in school, get good grades, when you grow up to be president you're certain to disgrace your nation.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki demanded the removal of American checkpoints from the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday, in what appeared to be his latest and boldest gambit in an increasingly tense struggle for more independence from his American protectors.

Mr. Maliki’s public declaration seemed at first to catch American commanders off guard. But by nightfall, American troops had abandoned all the positions in eastern and central Baghdad that they had set up last week with Iraqi forces as part of a search for a missing American soldier. The checkpoints had snarled traffic and disrupted daily life and commerce throughout the eastern part of the city.

Hey, I get it.  It was a choice between traffic jams ... or securing the capital and finding our lost GI.   That used to be a no-brainer in the quaint old days of a more chivalrous era.

Like four years ago ... Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 9/20/2002:

"Throughout the history of our nation, we have been blessed by heroes willing to sacrifice their freedom to protect and defend our own.  It is still so today.  In foreign lands and on far away seas, courageous military men and women are fighting to defend our country's freedom.

"They do so knowing that if they should fall on the field of battle, should they be captured or lost, we will do everything in our power to find them and to bring them home,"  That is our pledge to them and to you.

The Carpetbagger makes the point that, "Maliki doesn't have 'command' over U.S. troops, but our soldiers abandoned all the positions in eastern and central Baghdad they had set up just as soon Iraqis told them to."

This happens under the watch of a President who promised exactly the opposite.

Back when we had Beloved Leader the Swaggerer he castigated the Clinton Adminstration for allowing NATO commanders to have US Forces under their command. "Never Happen under my watch" said he.

Dishonorable?  Too mild a word if you ask me.  It's criminal, and Dem Vet shows us just where in the Code of Conduct we find the mandate that we do not leave soldiers behind, a Code that earned many a hero more than just a Button, but a premature trip to Arlington as well.  Heros who, unlike the cretins running the show, knew the meaning of the words, "Honor, Duty, Code"

And now you know why they want to make Kerry a campaign issue, because the truth of the war is something they cannot handle.

Yes, this election is indeed about Iraq, and now it's not just the lies that got us there or the incompetence that turned it into such chaos we can't get out, or the war crimes, or corruption -- but now it's the cowardice of the 1600 crew too.

Do you really need any more proof than this:  Bush wants Rumsfeld, Cheney for rest of term - USATODAY.com

The 101st Fighting Keyboarders on full alert

103 dead in Iraq this month, 2814 dead in the war,  and they're fighting the Battle of Don't Get The Joke.

Rangel said Cheney may need to go to "rehab" for "whatever personality deficit he may have suffered."