Honey, I shrunk the Iraqi police force

Something Joe Biden said caught my eye the other day.

He said that:

In fact, to the best of my knowledge -- in my trips there recently, my staff trips there just a couple weeks ago, talking with General Petraeus -- not one single, solitary Iraqi policeman has completed the 24-week training course on the ground," Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

I thought, "Now, that's probably hyperbole." There might be some truth to it, but c'mon. There has to be at least one that has completed the training course. But the evidence has yet to appear.

Then I see this story creep out this morning:

Bush claim on training of Iraqis disputed

Pentagon documents and Democratic congressional sources dispute President Bush's claim, made Saturday, that nearly 100,000 "fully trained and equipped" Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel are at work, Reuters said yesterday. The Pentagon documents show that of the nearly 90,000 people now in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained," and it will be July 2006 before the administration reaches its goal of a 135,000-strong, fully trained police force.

Thing is, on September 10, Rumsfeld was saying that they have 95,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi troops. And in June he claimed that 206,000 Iraqi security forces were at work.

By now I should be used to the numerical gymnastics of George Bush. But let me tell you, I am not used to it. Every single one of the President's budgets grossly underestimated the deficit. He missrepresented the cost of the Medicare Bill by half. He underestimated the cost of the war by what, a trillion dollars? He campaigns on strong, resolute leadership. That kind of leadership doesn't allow facts to overcome reality. Certainly, the small fact that the entire Iraqi Police force does not exist in no way stops the President from saying it exists. Why would it?

Bush's supporters seem ready to make any excuse for his "patriotic management of the truth." Not only do they accept these egregious lies, they gobble them down like bannana splits and spit them back as the very reasons they support him - Strong, Decisive, Resolute.

When will Republicans stop rewarding the President's dishonesty? How can members of our government go on national TV and tell people, the world in point of fact, that they have trained 200,000 Police Officers when they have only trained 8,600? There is no reasonable excuse for a lie of that magnitude. If it isn't a lie, in other words, if Rumsfeld and the President didn't know that their numbers were wrong, there is no reasonable excuse for that magnitude of incompetence.

Back when my oldest son was two years old he used to run around in his underpants with a cape around his neck pretending he was Batman. I didn't have the heart to tell him he wasn't really the caped crusader. No harm done if he thinks he's a superhero for a while, right?

Well folks, George Bush is running around the world in his president suit and a cape made out of the American flag telling everybody he saved Iraq. It's pure fantasy, a fantasty that is costing lives, national integrity and our financial well being. It's high time we gave him a time out.