Another Day, Another Bush Threat

Yet again, as pretty much every day, Bush issued another threat to veto the appropriations bill. I guess this is supposed to scare somebody, because it sure doesn't make him look any more relevant or powerful. Of course, shrill Republicans remind us that the President has the right to veto any bill. Yeah, that's absolutely true. I had thought Republicans were all about the President ignoring the Constitution, however. That was one of the things Congress allegedly "meant" when they authorised the invasion of Iraq, wasn't it? You know, along with warrantless surveillance, secret prisons, torture, etc....and also eliminating audits as to where all this money was going in Iraq (secret!). Pretty much everything is secret now, including what Bush had for lunch.
Yep, he's a-gonna veto it. Of course, that's the bill that finances his ill-considered, fictionally-premised and hugely unpopular war. So if he vetoes it, the bill goes back to Congress, which isn't exactly fast or inclined to give him what he wants. He's just as likely to get another bill that he doesn't like as he is to get what he wants. And the longer he "hangs tough" the longer the troops go without the money. Who's playing politics here?
Polls show that the majority in the U.S. no longer believe that Iraq is the "central front in the War on Terror". Maybe if Bush says that it is a dozen more times, then people will change their minds. Nah, not bloody likely. So is the war in Iraq a war? We declared the war over in 2003, and Bush has been very clear that what is going on now is just us fighting "terrorists", not a civil war. So all of those reports about Shia and Sunni militias fighting for control are just a distraction from the REAL battle with the thousand or so Al-Qaeda (by the Pentagon's estimate) in Iraq. Now nobody seriously believes that Al-Qaeda is responsible for the death squads killing groups of Shia and Sunni, but Bush has taken the credit for the decline in death squad activity as part of the "surge". So are we fighting Al-Qaeda or refereeing a civil war?
Because if we really are just referees in a civil war, then how can we "lose" by withdrawing any more than an umpire "loses" a baseball game? How does a referee "surrender", anyway?
Of course, Bush constantly warns of dire consequences if we "lose" in Iraq:

The "terrorists" will bring the fight here. Okay, I fail to see how Shia and Sunni fighting for control of their own country are at all interested in coming over here and fighting us, so I guess we are back to those thousand or so Al-Qaeda that we are ostensibly 'fighting'. What is preventing these thousand or so Al-Qaeda from coming over here now? Somehow, these terrorists prefer to "fight" heavily-armed soldiers in a country that stopped functioning a long time ago than to attack soft civilian targets of unarmed people in the U.S. Has anyone told Al-Qaeda about this strange rule that it's no fair to attack the U.S. while it has troops in Iraq? What is preventing those thousand or so Al-Qaeda from coming over here after Iraq is "stabilised", assuming it ever is? Is Iraqi "stabilisation" somehow going to kill off Al-Qaeda like a vampire in sunlight? Or will they just be too ashamed to attack us at home after having "lost" in Iraq?
This fairy tale of fighting terror "over there" instead of "over here" polls well with Republicans who have a limited ability to think critically. By the way, when did the Iraqis agree to host a war against Al-Qaeda in their country?
And lastly, how do you "fight" a roadside bomb? Shoot the rubble?
When Bush warns of dire consequences should we withdraw from Iraq, he really means dire consequences for the Republican Party, not the U.S.