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Bush Blames the Troops

Robert Scheer

PRINT ARTICLE TAKE ACTION EMAIL ARTICLE SUBSCRIBE NOW BLETTERS (1) Blame it on the military but make it look like you're supporting the troops. That's been the convenient gambit of failed emperors throughout history as they witnessed their empires decline. Not surprisingly then, it's become the standard rhetorical trick employed by President Bush in shirking responsibility for the Iraq debacle of his making. Ignoring the fact that we have a system of civilian control over the military, which is why he, the elected President, is designated the commander in chief, Bush hides behind the fiction that the officers in the field are calling the shots when in fact he has put them in an unwinnable situation and refuses to even consider a timetable for getting them out. He did it again Monday, responding to the prospect that both houses of Congress seem in agreement on setting guidelines for the "progress" that the President continually proclaims is at hand. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable [for] withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job." This is disingenuous in the extreme, because Bush is the Washington politician who plotted this unnecessary war from the moment the 9/11 attack provided him with an excuse for regime change in a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack.