The End Game

The End Game

While George Bush is under general anesthetic - if Cheney had a medical emergency with one of his quadruple bypasses or Lipitor scheduling error, and Bush did not wake up for a while, we would have an America firmly out of the control of Republicans. Would that mean that any change of direction may occur - perhaps a rush to file papers for impeachment could be a good idea, and get in before the anesthetic wears off. It is what they would do.

Seriously, long shots like medical error on the President while Cheney is cleaning his rifle may change the nature of this crop of Democrats but if an election were to be held today how could a Republican win? The advance media for Hilary is replacing good press day for the President. She is seen as articulate where Bush is heard bumbling. Obama is seen as relevant, alive - where Cheney is only kept alive by modern medical miracles.

Bush is faced with the cost of his primary error. Invading Iraq when he did not absolutely have to, he lost the extraordinary morale high ground granted by the obscenity on the American psyche; and yet as Osama bin Laden is walking free, even if only in their thoughts, the bulk of their military muscle is being exposed to a civil war it started by undoing the chain letter of death threats that was Saddam's rule.

What it such a good idea? Right-minded Americans find rationales to believe it is of course a good thing - but will American democracy sustain the attack long enough to do any good? These are just excuses to keep the war going indefinitely and are no longer ringing true to the electorate.

Bush will run out of time before ending this war. He will leave it to the next President to sort out, because his domestic agenda will take over. He will suddenly be having to make making handsome gestures to maintain his office.  

There is no end game in the foreseeable future unless Mr Bush just cuts and runs from Iraq.  

House rebukes the president on Iraq

House rebukes the president on Iraq

A good telling off should put Mr Bush back into line with the rest of the world. He has had too much nodding and the deadly smiles of the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney's rippling grimness. His cabal of approval has been broken. How he has to contend with a Democrat Congress.

Mr Bush has to listen to the people's elected representatives who are now telling him to pull his horns in. His view is becoming the isolated minority but can the Democrats produce a cohesive plan or do they want the voters to decide what that will be. Here is a range of candidates defined by their Iraq strategy.

This way of ranking candidates is not valid. Remember there is no valid logic behind the war and if one could consider that Bush may have run again anyway in 2004, if Al Gore had served a first term elected President in 2000 - as he was voted to do by a slim margin according to the news media reports of discounted votes and interference with Florida voters. If Bush was a first term president he would only now be considering his Iraqi invasion options. In other words, increasingly, this is Bush's war and nobody else will want to fight it.

About bloody time someone got Bush to defend his rationale before accepting that this man who has got nearly everything else wrong should be now getting anything right.

More Al Gore

More Al Gore

The Politico - we are not the only publication that sees Al Gore rise above the crowd - but whether he runs or not may not depend upon the politics of destiny, the choice is his alone to make.

The signs are that he is well placed to do it. Being away from politics means that he did not vote for the Iraq invasion. If he wins an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth it will only encourage voters to see him as a leader. The one they should have got in the first place. Of course the danger is the reintroduction of old thinking but Al Gore was VP when American was suffering from one huge surplus after another. The main problem was the stupid Republican attack dogs savaging Monica and Bill. That was an extraordinary time designed to convince America to lurge toward the right far enough to let a fundamentalist Christian into the White House to delivery on the Book of Revelation. So far, Bush has brought the Doomsday Clock back to single figures - if he had finished Afghanistan before lunging into Iraq, it would be a sunny afternoon, but instead American needs the second coming of Al Gore to save it from its reaction to the terrorism medicine.

It is no longer a question of the Democrats fielding a believable warrior or war hero, it is the intelligence and focus, it is the solution to the problem of the multi-headed wars on terrorism. Many are also terrified of what climate change is doing to the world.

Al Gore - America needs someone with out fear and with conviction to change the way it is to the way it will be. The future with an Al Gore presidency is a clear choice. The future with any of the other potential Democrat candidates does not have that advantage.

Democrats should run with their best choice and not consider what the republicans will do all that much. John McCain is more credible than Guilliani. Who is the in the lead there may determine the VP choice - but if Al Gore steps forward we are looking forward to his term as President - and we also predict that this is a likely outcome and that the Iraq / Iran / Israel situation stands to have some progress in the next twenty years.