How Dare Those Iraqi Leaders Take a Vacation When Americans Were Nice Enough To Start a War in Their Country?

Technorati Tags: Dick Cheney, Republican leaders, Pres. Bush, Iraq war, Iraqi lawmakers

Warning: Rant ahead:

Via Blogrunner, the WaPo reports that Republican leaders had a Serious Discussion with Pres. Bush on Tuesday:

Bush Told War Is Harming The GOP
A Warning on Eve Of Vote on New Bill

By Shailagh Murray and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 10, 2007; Page A01

House Republican moderates, in a remarkably blunt White House meeting, warned President Bush this week that his pursuit of the war in Iraq is risking the future of the Republican Party and that he cannot count on GOP support for many more months.
[...]
"It was a very remarkable, candid conversation," Davis said. "People are always saying President Bush is in a bubble. Well, this was our chance, and we took it."

Even with pressure mounting, Congress and the White House are making little progress as they try to find a bipartisan option to fund the war through the summer. Senate leaders met with White House officials yesterday and produced no agreement, as Gates warned lawmakers that the debate is beginning to delay Pentagon operations.

The one area of agreement seemed to be that U.S. officials want the Iraqi government to better contain violence there. Vice President Cheney made an unannounced trip to Baghdad yesterday to meet with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other officials. He urged them to help end fighting between rival Sunni and Shiite factions, to make progress on revising their constitution, and to better manage their oil revenue.

Cheney also expressed concern about the Iraqi parliament considering a two-month summer vacation. That has angered members of Congress and other American officials, who say it shows a lack of concern for the commitment of U.S. troops.

Participants in Tuesday's White House meeting said frustration about the Iraqi government's efforts dominated the conversation, with one pleading with the president to stop the Iraqi parliament from going on vacation while "our sons and daughters spill their blood." ...

ExCUSE me? Since when do Iraqis have ANY obligation to concern themselves with the blood being spilled by our sons and daughters? Did anyone in Iraq ask U.S. troops to come in? Did Iraqi lawmakers invite the United States to invade their country? Where do they get the gall, these Republican congressmen, to suggest that the president of the United States should "stop the Iraqi parliament from going on vacation" as some kind of gesture to American lives, when (a) Iraq is supposed to be a sovereign country; and when (b) the decisions and policies that put those U.S. troops in harm's way in somebody else's country were made and approved by those very Republican leaders; and when (c) the policies that put those American men and women in Iraq have directly and indirectly caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians; and when (d) the president of the United States wants to keep the blood of Americans spilling in Iraq indefinitely, with no restrictions, deadlines, or criteria for withdrawal; and when (e) most of those Republicans -- the ones sitting in that meeting with Pres. Bush as well as all other others sitting in Congress -- have been rubberstamping and supporting the policies that have killed about 3,400 of those U.S. troops to date and STILL support those policies, the only reason that any of them are backing away from those policies being party politics? And by the way: Is Pres. Bush going to give up his vacation in Crawford for the entire month of August?

I'm not done yet. What kind of a supine, craven newspaper is it that blandly states, "The one area of agreement seemed to be that U.S. officials want the Iraqi government to better contain violence there," as if the Iraqi government is the ultimate, originating party responsible for the violence there! U.S. officials want the Iraqi government to "better contain violence" in Iraq? What overweening presumptuousness! The U.S. invades their country, aggressively and for no justifiable reason; sets up a military occupation that continues to this day; makes stupid mistake after stupid mistake; sets off an insurgency that turns into sectarian warfare that turns into a civil war that turns 4 million Iraqis into refugees; actually tells Iraqis, in so many words, that U.S. troops are there in Iraq to keep the terrorist violence going on in their country so it won't come to the United States -- and then those same U.S. officials have the utter, unimaginable arrogance to lecture Iraqi lawmakers about "better containing the violence" there?

You know what? Don't even get me started on Dick Lucifer Cheney instructing Iraqi government officials to "make progress on revising their constitution, and to better manage their oil revenue."

Cross-posted at Shakesville.