You�ve got to hand it to the Republicans. In the early days of November, Democratic Senator Harry Reid�s invoked a closed-door Senate hearing in order to revive an investigation into intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq. Not to be outdone, the Republicans (this time in the House) pulled a political stunt that brought mudslinging to new frontiers.

On Friday November 18 House Republican Representative Duncan Hunter led a motion for a vote on immediate withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq. What looked from a distance like honest self-criticism and evaluation was instead the latest in a recent round of attempts to smear anybody who criticizes the war and is crazy enough to ask when we�re going to get out of there. The motion was done in response to Democratic Rep. John Murtha�s public statements the previous day that urged military withdrawal within six months and attacked Bush for thinking he (who never saw battle during the Vietnam war) knew more about fighting a war than people with actual combat experience. Murtha is a decorated Marine veteran with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star who served for 37 years. He is widely considered a chief authority on matters of military policy and, having served some 31 years in the House, is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. He voted in favor of starting the war, by the way.

Once Murtha�s proposal had been safely distorted to reflect the war hawks� perception of their opposition, Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt (the most junior or �newbie� member) poured gasoline on the new straw man and set it ablaze by speaking about a phone call she had just gotten from a Marine deployed in Iraq.

Quoth the newbie, "He asked me to send Congress a message: stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

After administering this verbal kick-in-the-balls on Murtha and being shouted down by the Democrats, Schmidt then had the audacity to say her words �were not directed at any member of the House" and asked that they be stricken from the record. Democratic Rep� said the entire proceedings were �pathetic,� and Republican John Warner called it �more political posturing.� Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said their motives were completely innocuous and the vote was done to show support for the troops.

In reality this was just another example of the Iraq war�s proponents hiding behind the military in order to compensate for their shortsightedness and incompetence. On Veterans� Day the previous week President Bush was quoted as saying, "Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war." Let�s do a little math: Bush won the 2004 election with 51% of the vote as opposed to John Kerry�s 48. Polls now show that 60% of Americans think the war is not worthwhile and 52% think Bush is untrustworthy. It doesn�t take a Yale graduate (not even one with a C average) to know there is a significant difference between 48 and 60, or even 52. No, this isn�t �some Democrats and anti-war critics,� at least not so much anymore. This is the majority of the American people. There�s plenty of overlap going on, and it�s only going to get worse as the next Congressional election cycle draws nearer and incumbent Republicans start trying to save face.

I know at this point I�m coming off like a broken record, but what is it about the Bush administration that makes them so averse to criticism? You�d think that, doing something as important as running the most powerful nation in the world, they would welcome whatever innovation and different perspectives may come their way, whether or not they agree with them. But no, to them a contradictory opinion is either baloney or an act of betrayal.

Earlier this year Amnesty International released its annual world report, in which it referred to the detainee holding facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as �the gulag of our times.� Administration officials jumped on the admittedly unfortunate choice of words and said little about what would prompt an organization (whom the administration has repeatedly cited in the past) to use such loaded language, things like indefinite detention and using doctors (who are under an oath �to never deliberately do harm to anyone for anyone else's interest.�) to formulate more effective interrogation methods, usually involving the exploitation of a phobia. They spent more time chipping at the �gulag� label than talking about (much less defending) the practice of abducting people (not just from Middle-Eastern countries but citizens of nations like Canada and Germany) and taking them to be interrogated in a country that doesn�t have as much red tape as the U.S. to get around. According to CIA chief Porter Goss, these are just �unique and innovative� tactics that aren�t torture, kind of like a girl who lets herself be penetrated everywhere except through the hymen so she can continue saying, with a straight face, that she�s still a virgin.

Maybe that�s taking it a little too far (like the �Killing for peace� analogy I mentioned last time), but what else can be said about people who spend time redefining words so they can get away with as much as possible? Dick Cheney says, "For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously." The feeling�s mutual.

Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz mocked General Eric Shinseki�s pre-war notion that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq, calling it �outlandish.� More than 2,000 U.S. casualties later we�re learning that keeping the peace isn�t as easy they thought it would be. Did anyone suffer the appropriate consequences? Hell no. Shinseki went into retirement and Wolfowitz became President of the World Bank. Par for the course when the White House considers loyalty to a person more important than loyalty to a principle.

When Murtha made his proposal on national television, White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said they were �baffled� that he would be �endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party.� I reiterate: 60% is NOT some lunatic fringe group. Once again their first thought was, �how can I he say that about us?!� instead of �now what would make him say that about us?�

I keep harping on the topic of arrogance because it encompasses everything that this administration represents. George Bush is seemingly incapable of conceding error. On the contrary, he has an uncanny knack for reshaping the world in order to fit his ideas. Take Iraq: we were all sold on the idea that it was a terrorist breeding ground and a key front in the War on Terror. Well, it wasn�t. But then we invaded it and didn�t dispatch the necessary forces to keep it under control, and viola! Suicide bombers started coming out of the desert. Hell, it took a tri-state Category 5 hurricane for him to take responsibility for something and admit he made a mistake, and even then events were being shaped to fit an ideology. Conservatives have long talked about how unreliable the federal government is, but when you�re appointing people like Michael Brown to the head of FEMA, what do you expect to happen when something like Hurricane Katrina comes along? Ditto for expecting an oil tycoon like Bush to establish a sensible energy policy.

The Murtha incident was a new low for recent politics; thankfully it occurred right before a Thanksgiving recess, offering the possibility of some reconciliation after things have simmered a little, though it isn�t likely to happen. I�m going to say it again: both sides need to drop the ideological posturing. Michael Moore-types need to acknowledge the necessity of cleaning up the mess we made, and Bush-types need to acknowledge we made a mess and quit letting the ideologues of the Project For the New American Century set the course of our country. Maybe a New Year�s Resolution is what we need; let�s all vow to open our minds voluntarily instead of smashing each others� open.