This miserable presidency

It looks like we will have to live under this miserable presidency for another 16 months. There is not the congressional courage to impeach Bush and Cheney. In the meantime, the media has been going on endlessly about senatorial solicitation of airport sex instead of really honing in on White House dishonesty about Iraq, including the demonstrable failure of the "surge."

Much of the latest hype is about tribal chiefs who used to shoot at US soldiers and now are helping to fight Al Qaeda. (This is Sunni against Sunni.) Whether or not these new converts start shooting at US soldiers again, the fact remains that most of the blood in Iraq flows from Shia killing Sunni and Sunni killing Shia in their civil war.

Bush continues to be the prince of distraction, most recently getting headlines by telling troops in Iraq that he just might be able to bring some troops home before long. This is cruelty, pure and simple. Anyone with open eyes and an operational brain knows that Bush wants to keep this war going and hand it over to his successor in January 2009.

The lies seem eternal, going back to the WMD and Iraq-behind-9/11 hoaxes. The latest whopper is that he (The Decider) and Cheney did not really want to dismantle Saddam's army and send all those young guys into the streets with no job. The record clearly says otherwise.

Next week Bush's man Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will bring home their much vaunted report. They are the writers. Guess who is the editor. It will make no difference; everybody knows that the funeral processions will continue.