Boustany Puts Party Before Principle With Iraq Spin

Congressman Charles Boustany just returned from Operation Essential Campaign Photo Op in Iraq and, on cue, gave The Daily Advertiser a breathless "everything's coming up roses" perspective on the war we're waging there.

Seems the fact that he and his fellow Congressmen had to wear full body armor the entire time there and the fact that it was not safe enough for him to travel between cities by land didn't strike him as running counter to his own assessment!

Hey, why are Congressmen getting the full body armor and not the soldiers?

While Charlie was busy drinking the Defense Department Kool Aid and declaring that he wasn't scared to be there, Military Times was reporting that the war is not wearing well within the U.S. Military itself. Only 54 percent of active duty military give President Bush favorable ratings for his leadership in the Iraq war.

As for Boustany's touting of U.S. successes in Iraq, we can prepare to freeze the list. Apparently, the Bush administration is declaring rebuilding Iraq another "mission accomplished." The Washington Post reports that the administration is not going to request any additional dollars to rebuild the country we broke, in Colin Powell's famous (but inaccurate) Pottery Barn anology. No, not going to rebuild it. Not going to even leave a reasonable facsimile in our wake. This does not bode well for the 'other' major reconstruction process — the U.S. Northern Gulf Coast. The Bush administration apparently suffers from attention deficit disorder.

And, sticking to his party line script, Boustany tries to make the carnage all seem worth, well, the carnage. Perhaps the Congressman should consider the views of this father of a Marine killed in Iraq.

And while Boustany is all for wars in support of the myth of building democracy elsewhere, he does not particularly upset with President Bush's decision to shred the actual Constitution here in a sustained, illegal, and unconstitutional campaign of eavesdropping on communications of U.S. citizens conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). Oh, and those eavesdropped conversations were shared with other agencies.

One wishes that Congressman Boustany would take his oath to defend the Constitution and laws of the United States almost as seriously as he takes his blood oath to follow his party's political lie.

That's not a typo.