Pentagon throwing shit at wall, watching carefully

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a House panel Wednesday that the U.S. should know after a couple hundred more soldiers are dead whether the so-called Iraqi government is making progress toward "peace" and whether the United States "is going to have to look at other alternatives and consequences, such as getting the hell out."

In stark contrast to his crooked, delusional, incompetent predecessor Donald H. Rumsfeld, Gates also said there was no doubt the Army and Marine Corps needed to be larger if they are to deal with future wars the Bush Crime Family might start and give troops enough time between combat tours to get divorced.

"We don't know what's going to develop in places like Russia and China, in North Korea, in Iran and elsewhere," he said. "We may have to bring them democracy."

Gates testified alongside Marine Corps General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as the House was gearing up for its first full-fledged debate on the Iraq war since the November 7 elections. House Democrats plan next week to bring to the floor a pointless measure that pays lip service to the near-universal opposition to President Bush's plan to send a minimum of 35,000 more troops to Iraq, without actually stopping him from doing it.

Pace and Gates said they did not think debate in Congress would hurt the morale of troops in combat, undercutting the supremely disingenuous and un-American assertion by many congressional Republicans and the whores who speak for them, that opposing this pointless and unwinnable quagmire somehow hurts the fighting forces dying in it.

"As long as this Congress continues to do what it has done, which is to provide hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the people selling the weapons to every side of this conflict, the troops will feel supported," Pace said.

Gates added that troops understand members of Congress want to find the best way to win the war. "I think they're sophisticated enough to understand that that's what the debate's really about," he said. "That is what the debate's about, isn't it?"

Earlier in the hearing Representative Duncan Hunter, the top Republican on the panel and a raging right-wing freak who seriously thinks he's got a chance to be president, said he would oppose any resolution on Iraq, no matter how toothless and stupid.

"I do not think you can send a message that is going to raise the morale of the troops while at the same time sending a message that we don't support the mission," the Californian said. "Those boys don't want to come home. They like it there."

Gates said U.S. forces might be able to start leaving Iraq before the end of the year, if the Democrats controlling the purse finally grow a set of balls.

White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow told reporters Wednesday that it was premature to criticize the doomed Iraqi government, which is riddled with Shi'ite and Sunni partisans and has fallen behind on enacting legislation intended to improve relations between them.

"Our job is to work with the Iraqis and to push them. It is not to scold them," Snow said. "That doesn't do you any good. It's really lousy diplomacy, as a matter of fact. You've either got to pay them or kill them."

Democrats and several Republicans say they oppose the troop buildup and that it is time the Iraqi government stepped up to defend its own country from its own citizens.

Senators Barack Obama and John Kerry separately pushed legislation ordering troops out of Iraq within a year.

Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate have patiently explained to their rank-and-file that a vote on a pointless nonbinding resolution opposing the troop buildup would merely be the first attempt to pressure Bush to shift course in the war. When that doesn't work, other legislation will be binding, they said.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said in an interview, "If you're not for victory in Iraq, you're for failure," but refused to define either term.