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Dodd’s Hour

Believe it or not, there are Democrats whose most ardent hope is that Bush will come to his senses and end the war in Iraq before the next presidential election. One can almost hear the sweat pouring off their foreheads splashing on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

That hope, somewhat unrealistic considering Bush’s adamantine refusal to withdraw the troops, is in its death throws after General David Petraeus’ report to congress. The Petraeus report did not go down well with the ardent anti-war crowd huddled in the bunkers over at MoveOn.org, who accused the general of “Betrayal (rhymes, sort of, with Petraeus) or the anti-war harridans over at DailyKos, Impeach Bush Central.

Our own Sen. Chris Dodd is one of the principal leaders of the Movement To Get Bush To Put His Head In A Noose And Pull The Trap Door.

It’s not working. The man is stubborn and has no yen for self destruction. The Democrat, anti-war take on Bush is that he bumbled into the presidency fraudulently (the environmentally friendly Al Gore should be mowing the lawn at the White House) and once there, after Osama binLaden (still on the loose, by the way) had made a smoking ruin of the Twin Towers building in New York, Bush bumbled momentarily into glory, much to former Bill Clinton’s chagrin.

In those brief days, before the Democrat will to respond authoritatively to the terrorists had collapsed, Clinton was heard to mumble that he had not had a chance to respond vigorously to terrorists pretensions before his time in office had run out. Clinton’s wife Hillary is now running for president. Bill wanted to be Bush – really he did – but time ran out. At the time, Republicans were saying that Hillary’s husband had missed his chance after terrorist had first struck the Twin Towers building. He was content, they said, to lob missiles into inoffensive ibuprofen factory in Iraq.

All this time, Dodd, always a fervent anti-war senator, was playing his cards close to his chest. He voted for congressional augmentations of war powers following 9/11. Dodd lives, with his second wife and two new bambinos in East Haddam, about an hour’s drive from New York; the plume of smoke from the burning Twin Tower buildings could be seen from portions of Connecticut that were but a stone’s throw, so to speak, from the pillow where Dodd laid his head at night, sleeping the sleep of the just.

Well, in politics, things change – thank God.

Bush went on bumbling. The “Shock And Awe” portion of the war to end terror was a crashing success. But the seeds of defeat are sown in such successes. The Iraqi army – taken down a peg or two after U.S. troops swept through Baghdad – disappeared into the human brush, as did any evidence of weapons of mass destruction. There are anti-war Democrats, and some pro-war Republicans, who continue to think that the WMD’s were a dessert mirage thrown up by Saddam Hussein to fend off possible attacks from Iran. That mirage was, at the time, convincing enough to fool the heirs and assigns of the Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, Hans Blick, the United Nations Sherlock Holmes then looking for WMD in Iraq, and even presidential aspirants Dodd and Hillary.

Dodd, who sometimes appears to be running for president of DailyKos and MoveOn.org, has apologized profusely for his earlier support authorizing military intervention; Hillary – sweating out the possibility that Bush might plop the Iraq war on her presidential plate – has been a little more circumspect than Dodd. When First Husband Bill re-enters his former presidential pad, he just might be given the opportunity, through his wife, to recover some of his now faded glory as an assertive commander-in-chief.

Dodd doesn’t care about these things, because he has not been able to garner more than 1% in recent presidential polls. No one on the left has been anxious to suggest that Dodd's low poll ratings are indicative; the politician most closely associated with the Murtha plan to immediately withdraw troops has not been able to break out of his 1% poll rating cell. What does this mean?

Privately, Dodd’s life has been at least as successful as Bush’s Shock And Awe campaign. Like his counterpart in Massachussetts, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Dodd has become a permanent fixture in congress. His second marriage has been fruitful. Dodd is now the father of two delightful children, both girls. His only fear is that, should one of the girls decide to become a lesbian, her choice may be obstructed by fervent fundamentalists on the right who want to keep women naked and in the kitchen. Otherwise, the skies over East Haddam are blue, the pillow is soft, and over in New York architects are laying plans to fill in the dreadful footprint made by jihadists in the city. No plumes of smoke are visible on the horizon.

God is good, God is great.

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