3 Brainless Republicans with Foot in Mouth Disease

The House Armed Services Committee recently requested the removal of the phrase "global war on terror" from the 2008 federal budget because the term is too generic. Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) explained that this decision by the committee members was in response to the long standing efforts of the Republican Party "to tie together the misadventure in Iraq and the overall war against terrorists". Skelton and other Democrat leaders were immediately blasted by these three conservative nitwits:

1. During an airing of "Glenn Beck" on CNN Headline News, Mike Allen, the chief political correspondent for Politico.com, claimed that the "Democrats are trying to make Iraq the President's personal war". Allen continued by eloquently stating that "It's one big pot and, even if Harry Potter cannot name it, we're going to".

2. In the same interview, Beck suggested that, as a result of the actions of the House Armed Services Committee, he is starting to believe the Democrats want the United States to lose the Iraq War. Beck asked: "Why don't you do some real work instead of all of this political garbage? [The Democrats] have turned this into nothing but just trying to win the next election."

3. Last but not least, in an interview on "The Rush Limbaugh Show", Vice President Dick Cheney (one of the biggest nitwits of them all) proposed that Skelton was displaying "flawed thinking" by attempting to eliminate the phrase in the budget. In fact, Cheney declared that Skelton is "just dead wrong about this".

Way to go, gentlemen! Apparently these brain surgeons have not paid any attention to what their own side has been saying over the last two years. What do I mean by that?

1. On July 22, 2005, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld described the country's efforts in the Iraq War as "the global struggle against the enemies of freedom, the enemies of civilization". More recently, in an interview with Cal Thomas (the most widely syndicated political columnist in the U.S.), Rumsfeld professed that "I don't think I would have called it the war on terror...Terror is a weapon of choice for extremists who are trying to destabilize regimes and, through a small group of clerics, impose their dark vision on all the people they can control. So 'war on terror' is a problem for me."

2. Two days after Rumsfeld's comments, General Richard Myers, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed the National Press Club that he "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before because, if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution".

3. On July 27, 2005, Stephen Hadley, the National Security Advisor to Mr. Bush, stated in a telephone interview: "It is more than just a military war on terror. It's broader than that. It's a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative."