Touchy, touchy, touchy

The GOP, feeling the heat over the failures of Bush's War, lashed out against Sen. Kennedy.

The Iraq conflict spilled onto the Senate floor on Tuesday as Republicans and Democrats slugged it out over comments by Sen. Edward Kennedy that the war was a "fraud" launched for political reasons.

In bitter exchanges, Republicans said Kennedy should be rebuked and said he was hurting U.S. troops, while Democrats charged that Republicans were trying to divert attention from rising costs and shortcomings of President Bush's effort to rebuild Iraq.

Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, told the Associated Press in Boston on Thursday that "this was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud." Texas is Bush's home state.

So what where the GOP arguments? Get this:

Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites) Chairman John Warner, a Virginia Republican, talked of a serviceman's "young wife surrounded by small children" who "hear that this whole thing has been a fraud. Is that safeguarding those put in harm's way? I say no."

Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison complained that Kennedy was making "a slur" on her home state of Texas "to say this plot was made up" there.

In the House of Representatives, Majority leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, called Kennedy's statements "as disgusting as they are false," and said Kennedy owed Bush and the country an apology.

So, the GOoPers argue, saying the president waged war under false pretenses for political reasons 1) endangers the troops, somehow, 2) slurs Texas because -- I'm not sure why, and 3) is "disgusting".

Yeah. This is disgusting. Five soldiers dead in the last four days is disgusting. $7.25 billion a week on an unencessary war is disgusting. The stiffling of the Kay Report, which was supposed to expose Saddam's extensive WMD program (after moving the goalposts away from finding actual weapons), is disgusting.

And I find it disgusting that Republicans, faced with pointed criticism, can do no better than whine about the "tone" of Kennedy's critiques.

They need to own up to their president's fuckup. They need to justify the loss of each and everyone of our soldiers' lives.

But I won't hold my breath.

Posted September 24, 2003 01:22 AM | Comments (175)