I could bitch about the Scooter Libby thing, I guess. Except that Scooter knows that shit flows downhill, and he also knows that lying to the FBI will bite you in the ass--unless you're the President or something like that. And, apparently, he knows that the Prez has his back. Or wait, is that what I'm supposed to be bitching about? I get so confused.

I could bitch about the creepy veep's notion that the Vice President is some sort of fourth branch of government, untouched by any of the rules that govern the other three. Except that anyone who's been paying attention for the last six years already knew that.

I could bitch about the recent appeals court ruling saying, in effect, that in order to challenge the government's secret surveillance program, you have to prove you've been surveilled, even though it's against the law to reveal knowledge of said surveillance. Get that? Good. Because I don't.

Instead, I think it's time to take a look at what the Prez plans to tell Congress in September. You know, his big case for the success of The Surge and the need to continue the war the way he says it ought to continue.

While just about every Republican Senator up for re-election in 2008 has come out against the war and in favor of some withdrawal plan (namby-pamby as they might be), this morning the Washington Post reported that the Prez plans to send his own "Iraq success stories" to Congress, as none of the 18 "benchmarks" enshrined in the war spending law are likely to be met.

One of those stories, that sectarian violence dropped in June, has already been overshadowed by a suicide truck bomb attack north of Baghdad on Saturday that killed at least 155 and wounded at least 265. And instead of moving toward the Iraqi government controlling all security by November, it's becoming increasingly likely that the Iraqi government won't exist in its current form in November.

Iraq isn't a quagmire. It isn't a swamp or a jungle. It's a desert, which is the harshest environment on the planet. For those who would claim Antarctica is worse, Antarctica is a desert, too--just a really cold one. This is something of a complicated (not to mention mixed) metaphor, I suppose, but the simple fact is that we cannot make this desert a series of posh neighborhoods connected by Jack Nicklaus Signature (TM) golf courses.

Whenever we leave, we're not going to leave with a functioning Iraqi government in place. The violence will not subside before we leave. Our standing in the world will continue to stagger until we leave. In short, there are very few good reasons for staying.

A lot of "stay until the bitter end" types have invoked memories of the fall of Saigon when arguing against a withdrawal. This is patently absurd. Our allies in Iraq are more powerful than their enemies. The Iraqi government may be a mixed bag of inept administrators and power-hungry would-be warlords, but most of the people in the country want a government, not rule by one or another branch of Islam or, worst of all, anarchy a la al-Qaeda. If we left, a lot more people would die. But you wouldn't see people falling off helicopters and that sort of nonsense. You'd see a lot of people fleeing for Baghdad (which the government, in whatever form it might take, can keep safer than other places) and autonomous areas becoming that much more autonomous. And, yes, massive violence.

What we don't know is whether our continued presence will lead to more violence than if we stay. Those inclined to "fight it out" say that U.S. troops are the only thing keeping the country from blowing up. Those with even a rudimentary memory might note that the country was not near conflagration back in early 2003, before we invaded.

We don't know what will happen when we leave. But few would contest the fact that our continued presence undermines the legitimacy (such as it is) of the failing Iraqi government. As long as a supposedly Iraqi leadership relies completely on the muscle of the United States, it is nothing more than a puppet. We know this, the Iraqi government knows this and the people of Iraq know this. I don't think this particular government would last long without U.S. support, but I think that the people of Iraq could support some sort of homegrown leadership if it didn't rely on us for even its basic needs.

The will of the American people is firmly behind some sort of withdrawal--at the very least, the acknowledgment of our failures and the development of a new plan that involves many fewer American lives at risk. This is something of a chauvinistic belief, of course, but I think it's a reasonable one. We're getting Americans killed for little gain. We're killing Iraqis for little gain. There is no obvious end to this war. The Prez set out a list of conditions for continuing along his path, and now that they aren't going to be met, he's revising his conditions. This is standard operating procedure for politicians, of course, but we don't have to fall for it. Not this time.

This time, our leaders need to tell the Prez than enough is enough. He had until September, and it is already obvious that there will not be much, if any, improvement to be shown by then. We don't need to wait until November, or next March (Five years of war! Yippee!) or even January 20, 2009. The people have demanded it. It's time for Congress to do what it has to do to end the war.

Jon Worley had hoped his kids wouldn't spend their preschool years as he did, hearing about a war seemingly without end.