Note to the Dean

Mr. Broder,

You wrote this column entitled "Suggester in Chief" and I wonder if you might want to review what you said? I ask because, well, I find it hard to understand why you would think that Bush and the Republicans would do any of these things. (My underlines for effect.)

"But his main plea was for the president to take the temperature of Congress, by meeting personally with the Foreign Relations Committee and consulting seriously with its members, before settling on a policy for Iraq.

"The president needs some well-informed friends," Lugar said pointedly, and he warned Bush that people such as himself will not be ready to defend his decision if he simply waits and declares it after private discussions of the kind he has been holding within his war Cabinet.

After an election in which war-weariness was a motivating force for the defeat of Republican candidates, the president has to face the reality that the only decision on Iraq that can possibly command sustained public support is a collective decision shared with Congress -- not a personal order.

Any action he takes may still be thwarted by Iraq's own divisions. But if he does not bring Congress and both parties into the process, the policy will inevitably fail. He has to face that reality."

President Bush does not consult seriously with Congress, and he doesn't seem to face reality either. And Sen. Lugar certainly has, as the rest of the GOP have indeed done just that, defended his decision, else they would have supported the non-binding resolution of someone's, even their OWN resolution.

You write and speak with great assurance of your knowledge and standing in the great hub of the DC Beltway, yet there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between that picture and the ugly realities on the ground. Perhaps in your privileged spaces those truths don't stand up, but in the hot desert of Iraq, on the streets of over producing and underpaid America the truth is that George W Bush is not playing the same game as you.

You're playing this game of pretty JFK, the mighty heroes of the Greatest Generation, the vast "silent majority" confused by the lies and misapplication of history and intelligence in Vietnam; and our wonderful Decider is selling us all out through the delusional ravings of Dick Cheney and Doug Feith and Eliot Abrahms and Bill Kristol for the gains of Big Oil, you know, Exxon-Mobile's $39 BILLION last year, for the Media Monopolies (oh, so is Rupert Murdoch one of you now?) and the Military Industrial Complex that are the driving forces in our Chinese dominated economy (are the Chinese one of you now too?)

So when you write things like the above, I have to wonder. Are you feeling okay? Watching what you eat, drinking enough water? I mean, really, did you seriously think Bush was going to work with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Howard Dean and Pat "Eff You" Leahy? Face reality? George W Bush, who has never his entire life faced reality, is going to start now, when the destruction of our government is fast approaching the drowning stage, when the corporate coffers are bursting out at the seams, when the ranks of the millionaires and billionaires are growing faster than anything?

I look forward to some introspection in future columns on your part, Mr. Broder, some reflections not so much on the accuracy of your columns, but the mindset that produced them, the sense of well being and entitlement that allows you to be so wrong about this subject you've spent your adult life writing about. That's what I'd like to see for your next column, not some claptrap about vitriolic bloggers saying nasty argumentative things on their blogs, (and later I'll send you some stuff that will curl your eyebrows) but some serious discussion about the lies and mendacity and greed and arrogance of the Bush/Cheney administration, and the failure of the news media to report on that substance.