Bumper sticker brains in Dem race

William Murchison:

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There comes a time when you don't want even to parody words such as the Democratic candidates swapped with each other, because the effect is so soul-sapping.
The Democratic presidential candidates can't stand Mr. Bush. All right -- that's their constitutional privilege. They want the war over. All right -- name an American from the White House down to the Cindy Sheehan for Sainthood Club who doesn't want the war over.
What the Democratic presidential candidates neglect to tell us, the public, is how they would affect this wonderful result without ruin to the Iraqis and shame to themselves.
I have a possible answer for the second eventuality. It is that campaigning for American defeat proves that those who do so had no shame to begin with.
The worst of the lot -- as usual -- was John Edwards. It comes, I imagine, from Mr .Edwards' pre-political life as a trial lawyer willing to make any absurd argument in order to win.
I digress. What did the former senator say? He said, "What this global war on terror bumper sticker -- political slogan, that's all it is, it's all it's ever been -- was intended to do was for George Bush to use it to justify everything he ever does. The ongoing war in Iraq [for which Mr. Edwards voted]; Abu Ghraib; spying on Americans; torture."
Which proved a bit much for Hillary Clinton, who noted that September 11, 2001 had been carried out on her senatorial home ground. Yet Barack Obama bragged on opposing the war four-and-half years before Mr. Edwards.
Mrs. Clinton did make the profound point that Iraq is "George Bush's war." No one else that night, with the possible exception of Joe Biden, strayed far from the reservation. Not on Iraq. Not on the need to wrap it around Mr. Bush's neck and twist hard.
We need to look carefully at the phrase "George Bush's war." It tells us everything we need to know about this field of candidates. Not our war -- not America's. Mr. Bush's war. You get the implication here. When we quit the war, we're not really quitting; we're just cleaning up Mr. Bush's mess. He's the one this thing is all about -- not Saddam, not the weapons of mass destruction nearly everyone believed him to have; not the "bumper-sticker war" on the homicidal maniacs who took down the Twin Towers, and whose imitators are multiplying. No, this thing is all about Mr. Bush and "lies" that no one ever has shown were lies, as opposed to truthful representations of mistaken intelligence.
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Being irresponsible means never having to say your sorry for anything you did or did not do and that reflects most of the Democrat field. Certainly taking responsibility for the consequences of a retreat from Iraq is not on their agenda. They want all the bad things that happen from following their policies to be attributed to President Bush. He is the designated scape goat for all problems they create.