As the conventional wisdom on Iraq drifts from "there's no hope" to "there's no fucking hope in hell," it appears that the only thing keeping American troops in the line of fire is George Bush's unwillingness to accept blame for this colossal oopsie. So I have a simple solution for a witheringly simple man: blame me.
It wasn't GW who kept the vampire Rumsfeld in charge of "Defense" until after the mid-terms; it was me. Sorry. I thought he was going to come up with a brilliant plan to unscrew the mother of all fuck-ups, but I guess I was looking at the résumé rather than the man. Can't apologize enough, really.
As for the many-sided but oddly single-minded insurgency, that was me. You may have thought it was the power vacuum created by the Coalition Provisional Authority destroying the Iraqi government and army. Nuh-uh. I actually thought it would be a kind of friendly rivalry, like Bon Jovi and .38 Special, but the pyrotechnics got way out of hand. My bad.
We can let our fearful leader off the hook for every moment of jaw-dropping incompetence, every inhumanity visited on innocents, every motherless and/or fatherless kid -- Iraqi or American -- who's going to equate America with evil for the rest of their lives, and he doesn't even have to give back the bloody money he and his vice-ridden Veep have pocketed. They can just declare November whatever to be "National Dave Did It Day." I'll fess up. I'll even let one of those chickenhawk morons like Hannity or O'Reilly berate me on a live teevee interview for letting Bush take the blame for so long.
There's the deal, Blameless George. Point the finger -- at me, or, really, anybody whose scapegoatitude can make you comfy enough to pull your head out of your ass -- and BRING THE GOD-DAMNED TROOPS HOME NOW.
Thanks, and sorry. So incredibly sorry.