USA: Republican rats leaving Bush’s sinking Iraq war ship

By Dick Polman in The Philadelphia Inquirer in the USA:

GOP Moderates Wavering on Iraq

May 16, 2007

Here’s an interesting new quote from Capitol Hill: “We need to get out of the combat business in Iraq,” by setting a time line for U.S. troop withdrawal, in accordance with the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

Surely this must be a defeatist Democrat who has sold his soul to moveon.org, right?

Nope. The senator who uttered those remarks Thursday was none other than Sen. Lamar Alexander, R- Tenn. – a heretofore loyal Bushie on Iraq.

Meanwhile, we now have Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, working up a bill that would require President Bush to roll back U.S. troop levels to pre-surge numbers if the Iraqi government fails to meet specific benchmarks of progress.

Meanwhile, even House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, is saying that rank-and-file Republican patience is likely to run out by early autumn.

As he put it the other day, “By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well this (surge) is working, and if it isn’t, what’s Plan B?”

Boehner was later seconded by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is up for re-election next year in a state where antiwar fervor is now reportedly strong.

Last week, we also learned that a delegation of elected Republican moderates had trekked to the White House to perform a task that once was deemed unthinkable: Piercing the Bush bubble and telling the president to his face that it was past time for him to start dwelling in the real world, to recognize the wreckage of his credibility, to grasp the fact that most Americans wanted him to be held accountable for his failures – and to understand that further intransigence on Iraq might well wreck the Republican Party in 2008.

One congressman reportedly told Bush, “My district is prepared for defeat.”

Though in some places in the big USA, some Bush loyalists may be left, ranting and raving about some illusionary ‘victory’ in Iraq, the rats are now leaving Bush’s sinking Iraq war ship.

Somewhat intelligent rats first, somewhat stupid rats later.

As with politicians, so with Iraq war profiteering corporations.