I should be gloating

This should be a time of scheudenfreud-esque gloating and celebrating.

• W’s approval numbers are slipping lower and lower;
• the Veep has practically admitted that the Congress was NOT adequately informed about the eavesdropping program…

  From Face the Nation (3/19/2006)
  SCHIEFFER: Well, let me -- since you just brought that up -- will you support the move now under way in the Congress to give them more congressional oversight on the eavesdropping program?
  
  CHENEY: I've been directly involved, on behalf of the president, in negotiating with the members of both the House and the Senate and the Intelligence Committees in setting up he new arrangements.
  
  We negotiated an arrangement whereby there will be subcommittee in both the House and the Senate of the intelligence committees that a larger number of members, for example, seven members now in the Senate instead of just the two that have been briefed previously of the committee, will be fully briefed into the program.

• More and more evidence of the Katrina debacle is coming out
• The Vice President shoots a man and then find "other priorities" rather than speak to the police until enough time passes that one could have processed large amounts of alcohol were it necessary
• The President is proven to be out of the loop on things like allowing a country with direct ties to the 9/11 hijackers to have access to our least secure point of entry: our cargo ports.
• The “Commander in Chief” is also apparently out of the loop on the largest military action to take place in that land where “freedom is on the march”
• Noted conservatives like George Will and William F. Buckley are coming out for bringing our soldiers home.

The emperor has no clothes and folks are beginning to point and laugh.

And yet I take no solace on this, the beginning of the fourth year of Mr. Bush’s obscene little toying with his little green army men. I don’t even have as much as a self-satisfied chuckle to spare, because it would be drenched in the blood of all the lives needlessly tossed aside. No. On this day, I think of the soldiers. Those lost and those still there at risk.

As Iraq edges ever closer to civil war, it becomes obvious to even the most delusional that though our intentions may have been noble (though misguided and abominably executed), our goals are slipping out of reach. Dear God, protect our men and women in uniform until we can come to our senses and get them back where they belong. Let this be the last anniversary of keeping them in harm’s way.