House of Cards

Paul Krugman shows how much he hates America by pointing out the damage that the Bush administration is doing to the military. ". . . the Bush administration, which was ready neither to look for a way out of Iraq nor to admit that staying there would require a much bigger army, simply threw out the rulebook. Regular soldiers are spending a lot more than a third of their time overseas, and many reservists are finding their civilian lives destroyed by repeated, long-term call-ups." And so forth.

Krugman also refers to a Baltimore Sun (registration) article that Josh Marshall linked to on Sunday. That article examines the plausible case of a general losing a star and being forced to retire because he contradicted Donald Rumsfeld on a critical issue: "Riggs was blunt and outspoken on a number of issues and publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan and needed more troops."

The cavalier way that the president embroiled the country in a the Iraq quagmire with a force too small to carry out the mission is only the most obvious problem that the administration faces. The house of cards (war, debt, unpopular medicare expansion, etc.) that the Bushies are constructing must be about a mile high by now. The only question is when will it collapse. They sqeaked by with a historically weak reelection victory in 2004. If John Kerry had Bob Kerrey's wooden leg, he would be president right now. Should the house of cards falls before the 2006 elections and the damage be severe enough that the Democrats win control of one or more houses of congress, look for investigations galore starting in 2007. If they win control of the house, be prepared for the possibility of impeachment.

The administration's acolytes on the web and in talk radio will do their best to stem the tide (forgive the mixed metaphor) of Bush's collapsing house of cards. But it will collapse.