Surge protector

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AFP)--President George W. Bush on Friday fought to buy time for his ongoing rape of Iraq, as his chief spokesweasel grudgingly admitted that the war-torn country's puppet lawmakers would take an August vacation, just like Bush always does.

"You know, it's 130 degrees in Baghdad in August," White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow said in the air-conditioned pressroom. "My understanding is at this juncture they're going to take August off, but you know, they don't really do much anyway."

"I'm not in a position, at this point, to try to gainsay what the Iraqis are doing," he added, noting that the U.S. Congress will take a similar recess from August 6 to September 4, during which time they will travel to their home offices to catch up on their pro-impeachment mail.

In a fresh blow to Bush's dream of an endless war, two of his Republican party's elder statesman, Senators Richard Lugar and John Warner, urged him to start pulling U.S. troops out of the sectarian clusterfuck we created there by the end of the year.

They released their plan one day after Bush rejected any changes to his endless war plan until two months from now, when the most recent U.S. Iraq commander, General David Petraeus, gives a glowing report on the troop surge strategy or starts looking for another job.

The legislation, which appeared designed to unite those Republicans who hope to be re-elected with Democrats trying to end the war, calls for a new plan to be delivered to Congress by October 16.

The move came one day after the House of Representatives voted to withdraw most U.S. combat troops by April and as Bush held a videoconference with top military aides in Baghdad and Washington to hammer home his point that the war can, and must, continue at least until he leaves office.

"What happens in Iraq matters to the United States of America. A violent, chaotic Iraq is crucial to my financial security," Bush said as he heaped praise on U.S. contractors making hundreds of millions of dollars from failing to provide basic services in the strife-torn country.

While he spoke, the aides around the conference table at the White House, including part-time Defense Secretary Robert Gates and soon-to-be-ex-Joint Chiefs chairman General Peter Pace, sat with dazed expressions from trying to match the president drink-for-drink at lunch.

Bush--who has vowed to veto any legislation mandating what he calls a "hasty troop withdrawal" and everyone else calls "ending this disastrous and illegal occupation"--also underlined that "there's still a lot of money to be made."

The first report, made public Thursday, showed the Iraqi government making "satisfactory" progress on eight of 18 political and security benchmarks set by Congress, and scoring a "piss-poor" or "non-existent" rating on the rest, with barely 60 days before the next assessment is ignored.

"I grant you it's not a lot of time," said White House spokesmodel Dana Perino. "The president is saying, 'Let's give it a little bit more time to work,'" she added, and smugly noted that the Democrats lack the two-thirds majority to override an inevitable Bush veto.

She also emphasized that craven, delusional House Republicans had, with few exceptions, sided with the White House in Thursday's vote--even as increasing numbers of the party's heavyweights in the Senate have broken with Bush's plan upon realizing it's a career-killer.

But there was no mistaking the panicked urgency of Bush's public relations push, as the normally invisible Gates was to hold a news conference, while U.S. Secretary of State and Back-up First Lady Condoleezza Rice took to the airwaves to defend her man's troop increase despite the report.

And the dumb-as-mud president himself summoned a phalanx of conservative chickenhawk pundits for a group handjob at the White House on why his approach deserves more time.

Bush's strategy of indefinitely deploying 30,000 more troops in Iraq is "a work in progress," whined Rice, who appeared on all major U.S. television networks in another desperate attempt to downplay her boyfriend's profound failure as a leader and as a man.