PBS presents "Bush's War"

Seriously. Everyone who doesn't have the patent drive to get up from her computer desk and go to her local movie rental store to rent No End in Sight, or the patent patience required of Netflix, I suggest the entirely free, fast and easy way:

PBS' two-part Frontline program: "Bush's War"

Should you have a slow Internet connection, the program will be rebroadcast on channel 28 (bunny ears) or channel 10 (cable) the following days:

Thursday, March 27 at 8 am (Part 1)
Friday March 28 at 9 am (Part 2)

I don't have cable at my house, but I do pick up a pretty solid PBS signal thanks to "viewers like you," and so found myself watching this program the past two nights. I haven't seen No End in Sight yet (I'm one of the patently drive-less & impatient citizens of this modern democracy) but "Bush's War" pretty much spells it all out, clear as day, even interviewing many of the same top officials. There's less focus on what the troops go through and more focus on the inter- and intra-departmental squabbles. Squabbles that led to a botched job. And props to PBS for telling it like it is: It's not the Iraq war, it's Bush's War. Time for the news to start calling it that.

A few points:

• While Rumsfeld held the ropes, there was no other strategy in Iraq other than to keep troops mostly on the bases and the politicians in the Green Zone and to let Iraqis keep on insurgin'.

• Once Bush lied to the American people about "never firing Rumsfeld" and then firing him the day after the mid-term elections of 2006, thus hiring on Gates, the strategy became: provide some effing security to the "good" Iraqis so they don't give up hope and join the sectarian war.

• We must stay in Iraq until there is reasonable security. The U.S. owes it to Iraq. While the anti-war establishment was busy shouting "Hell No We Won't Surge" last year, it was more of a rebuke to Bush's failed policy of the past five years, rightfully dubbing it "too little, too late," than an actual plea for immediate withdrawal (which would be akin to standing back and letting genocide follow its inevitable course ... which is what we've done pretty much everywhere else in the world, but that's beside the point). But it's never too late to do some right after five years of mostly wrong. Of course, any truce agreement and security situation will be as shaky as any Palestinian-Israeli "pact," but at least we'll be able to withdraw and let the U.N. provide peacekeeping. As it stands right now, the U.N. should not have to deal with our shit.

• The grounds for Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's immediate prosecution for numerous crimes following Bush's exit from office could never be stronger. But it will probably take a pretty gutsy (Democratic) Attorney General. Edwards?