Crocodile tears

George W. Bush wept yesterday at White House ceremonies honoring 22-year-old Marine Jason Dunham who died two years ago in Iraq. I'm not sure I'd call that single tear that dribbled down his mottled left cheek weeping, but Georgie's eyes watered. Could have been emotion. Could have been hay fever.  No word on whether he has wept buckets over the other 3,999 US servicemen who have been killed in Iraq, or the thousands who have been permanently injured, or the hundreds of  thousands of Iraqi's who are living in a war zone. We have been in Iraq for five years, and no one's life is better and no one is safer, and the economy is in the tank, crushed under the weight of an ever escalating, never ending war debt. It's about George Bush shed a tear for something. The invasion was a failure, the occupation is a failure, the surge is a failure, and the government wants to continue. I have no idea where these soldiers are coming from, short of a draft. Bush continues to characterize this debacle as central to the "war on terror," which would be laughable if it were not so tragic. All Bush has managed to do is to turn more people against the United States, make it citizens the focus of Islamic distrust, and make the whole world generally more dangerous for the rest of us. So, why can't we just cut our losses and walk away?

Why bother?

I'm way past  the time when I voted on principle. Ralph Nader wants to be president, and to get there he will be hammering at the Democrats, once again, pushing more people into the arms of the dysfunctional Republican party. And yes, I am talking about independent voters who believe that John McCain is the best alternative to Hilary Clinton or Barak Obama. We have already seen the kind of damage Nader and his single digit has in an election. Nader may not he able to derail the Juggernaut that is Barak Obama, but do you really want to take the chance? Do we really need John McCain as president?