Got to Give it Up

In my last post, I talked about the hypocrisy of Republicans who are setting a timeline in September after dragging every other proponent of a timeline through the mud for years. Well, this may shock you, but I found some more Republican hypocrisy since then. This time they're trying to harass the Iraqi politburo, or whatever joke of a legislative body "runs" their country, into giving up its two month summer vacation.

In order to think this is an important problem, you have to assume that the legislative body there actually controls anything about the country. But from the violence and failed infrastructure, combined with the foreign military occupation and mass resignations, I would say they don't.

But Dick Cheney says they do. Specifically, he was scheduled to say that on his visit today. At the press availability this morning, the US Ambassador to Iraq mentioned that Cheney would talk about the vacation:

"The reality is, with the major effort we’re making, the major effort the Iraqi security forces and military are making themselves, for the Iraqi parliament to take a two-month vacation in the middle of summer if [sic] impossible to understand," [US Ambassador Ryan] Crocker said.

I would have to say I agree with that. But I'm quite surprised to hear about it coming from this party. The 109th Congress (last term's; dominated by Republicans) worked the fewest days AND failed to even complete its most basic legislative duties. Bush set the record for laziest President ever (measured by vacation days) almost two years ago. Most famously, Bush insisted on prolonging his vacation while thousands died in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

But this problem of vacations just dovetails with the larger Republican problem of connection with reality. Guys: it's too little too late. Sing it with me now: you got to give it up. If working on this pressing problem (so pressing that approximately 3,400 Americans are dead because of it) was so important to you, why did you take all those vacation days? And that brings us to Cheney's other statement. Apparently today he was scheduled to say, among other things, that:

We’ve got to get this work done. It’s game time.

As others have pointed out, what is it about a war ravaging through the Middle East for the last four years that makes it "game time" only just now? Was there a time when this was not important? Were you only giving this partial effort before, since it wasn't game time? Up til now, have we just been talking about practice?