BIN LADEN'S BEST XMAS GIFTS EVER? GEORGE BUSH, 'SURGE'

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Had you asked Iran and al-Qaeda what they wanted for Christmas in 2000, they might have asked for a seriously screwy fool to seize the U.S. government, recruit a crew of arrogant imbeciles to run it for him, invade Iraq with no exit plan, and then keep fighting a pointless war there to the last drop of someone else's blood. And when even his own party deserts them, he, with the assistance of a partially new set of imbeciles, could invent something called a "surge" to extend the nightmare into the abyss. Wow, that would be one heck of a present for America's enemies, and one serious nightmare for America.

Now, so many long years later, this Napoleon wannabe described above -- a terrorist's dream come true -- has actually owned up at last to the mistakes of failing to fight the Iraq war intelligently. But the biggest mistake -- one he won't admit -- was invading in the first place. He and his flunkies still claim they did the right thing and expect us to keep swallowing their fantasy. You almost can't blame them. Voters kept them in office in '04 even after the WMD and al-Qaeda ties proved nonexistent.

But America was not a perfect place before the war, and all the festering problems -- exported jobs, rampaging oil and pharmaceutical companies, broken education and housing, heating the Earth with our petroleum fixation -- grow more severe while we're forced to deal with this absurd misadventure. It didn't have to happen. New Orleans didn't have to drown, and we don't really have to blunder on with this goofball in charge. The Constitution makes it tough, but he can be lawfully removed.

In the meantime, our addled Prince demands that we pretend -- just as he pretends -- that this corrupt regime in Baghdad could save our bacon. Like him, we're also supposed to ignore Muktada al-Sadr, who runs the most powerful gang within the Green Zone government -- the same Muktada al-Sadr whose militias have attacked and killed our G.I.s. The photo above is of Casey Sheehan's tombstone. He was killed by Sadr's militias. You may recall that at one time our leaders told us they wanted Sadr dead or alive. Now our troops fight and die in his behalf in a mad circumstance that keeps Iran and al-Qaeda giggling.

All the terrible turmoil in and around Iraq that Bush predicted in his escalation speech in the event of failure may come to pass. What he failed to mention is that the longer our troops remain, the more severe the turmoil.

Here's a thought. Why not stop pretending? Why not demand that our congressional representatives find the backbone to withhold funds from this illegal, pointless war? Most liberal Democrats cling to this funding because they fear they'll be accused of withholding bullets from our boys and girls. But they don't fear for the G.I.s who will die. They fear for their careers. And they rationalize this fear by telling themselves they’re irreplaceable. It's not clear who is more guilty -- the fools who still believe Bush or the fools who don't but who keep funding his folly anyway.

Bush's principal mission now is to pass the mess on to someone else in two years and place the blame on whomver finally faces reality and gets us out of there. Meanwhile, our troops not only must die for his personal agenda -- they have to fill the role of smiling props when he visits them with a gang of carefully arranged camera crews, as he did again this week at Fort Benning.

But if we stop pretending, if we stop playing his game, we can pay serious attention to Bush's warrantless bugging and his reading of our mail and email. These acts -- and he's admitted giving the orders -- have already been confirmed as crimes in court. There's also a load of evidence that transparently evil Cheney is guilty of amazingly blatant war profiteering, also a felony. While we sit around and let them steer the ship of state, it sinks. It’s time to put a new captain on the bridge and send crews down to repair damage. Withhold the funds. Impeach.