Bush Can Run But He Can't Hide

It seems Bush just can’t get away from the Iraqi war controversy. Running away to South Korea doesn’t even help. He’s been involved in an endless tit-for-tat argument with war critics, in full view of the world.

While Bush was attending a meeting in Busan, about 4,000 Korean anti-war protestors chanted and shouted outside. While he was in Korea, Bush was informed that his Coalition of the Willing would be shrinking: South Korea will be withdrawing about a third of its troops from Iraq next year.

Then, as if the administration wasn’t having enough fun already, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced he was putting together a new grand jury. The CIA leak investigation will continue. The forecast: more political clouds lingering over the Bush Administration.

House Republicans sank to a new low yesterday (and you thought they’d already hit rock bottom). They engineered a vote on Rep. John Murtha’s proposal that we bring our troops home from Iraq. Trouble is, they twisted Murtha’s wording into a ridiculous caricature, and then voted on the caricature.

Murtha’s speech called for bringing the troops home “at the earliest practicable date” (roughly six months). He also said the U.S. should use diplomacy to establish stability in Iraq.

The Republicans re-worded it to “It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately” and then voted No. Most Democrats also voted No, showing what a stupid, meaningless stunt this “resolution” was. As Republicans are always saying about the Iraqi insurgents: “See how desperate they’ve become!”

Meanwhile, the Swiftboating of John Murtha is off to a roaring start. Remember, he’s a longtime Congressional Hawk who served 37 years in the Marine Corps. The White House released a statement comparing Murtha to Michael Moore. White House counselor Dan Bartlett said Murtha was a leftwing extremist, to the left of John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi.

Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, referring to Murtha’s speech, said “cowards cut and run, Marines never do.”

Ooookay. Hell, let’s cut to the chase and do their Swiftboating for them: Murtha killed John F. Kennedy, he invented AIDS and he single-handedly flew those two airliners into the World Trade Center.

For our final laugh of the day, Congress voted themselves a pay raise. Yup, our bloated, useless, underworked, overpaid “representatives” decided they’re not quite bloated enough. They need at least $165,200 a year to perform their “work,” which consists of…uhhh…just a minute, I’m checking…this might take awhile…