ast week The Nation magazine pictured on its cover the president's head popping out of a toilet with a perplexed expression on his face. The accompanying headline read, "No longer sitting pretty," then posing the question "How low can Bush's numbers go?" Lest we forget, we still have him in office for another two years and nine months. His poll numbers may well have bottomed out unless he makes another wrong move, perhaps against Iran.
The Gallup polling organization recorded a 13% drop in Republican support for Mr.Bush in just the past couple of weeks. Even significant numbers of conservatives are turning on both the chief executive and Congress for a variety of reasons; no success in the immigration battle, political scandals, no controlling government spending. It's a fact, since George W took office, government spending has increased by over 25%, which turns out to be the largest increase under any president since Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. For the past 12 years the GOP has reigned on Capitol Hill. If we continue to see such a precipitous decline in his popularity we might see a House and Senate that's Democrat controlled.
Mr.Bush's closest allies and supporters in the "Coalition of the willing" are paying a heavy price for their continued support in Iraq.
The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was defeated in Italy and Britain's Tony Blair appears to be on the way out of office, soon.
The question recurring in Washington is, should we, as the President has proclaimed", "stay the course in Iraq", or would it be better if we withdrew? There are those, including the President, who believe that if we withdraw it would undermine this country's credibility in the world. Remember Vietnam? The self-same argument was used against withdrawal from Vietnam. We were told, over and over, that the country would be overrun the moment we left the battle scene. We were left to believe that Chinese hordes would descend on North and South Vietnam. It didn't happen. Vietnam was overrun-by Vietnamese! Now we are seeing Iraqis fighting Iraqis. Insurgents have killed far more Iraqis than Americans. That is civil war. The whole invasion of Iraq was never in the interests of the United States. It has proven to be in the interests of Al Qaeda and Iran. As Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (ret.), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale has said in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Iran .."dislikes Al Qaeda as much as we do. It wants regional stability as much as we do. It wants to produce more oil and gas and sell it. If its leaders really want nuclear weapons, we cannot stop them. But we can engage them. None of these prospects is possible unless we stop moving deeper into the big sandy of Iraq. America must withdraw now."