Bush playing our Iraq fear card against us.

Watching Bush play the fear card in Iraq is truly watching virtuoso political genius at work. It's not Bush's idea, I assume. Raising the specter of catastrophe in Iraq should be the Dems' card, not Bush's. Yet there he is, playing it with utter chutzpah -- and dragging our chips over to his pile with a big smirk on his face. Bush continues to win hands with that absurd ploy to this day. He has even managed to extend the strategy to usurp the Dems' "Al Qaeda was the real enemy" card. Our Dems are being beaten up with their own nunchucks.

The whole thing reminds me of the scene in Blazing Saddles where Cleavon Little plays Bart, the newly appointed black sheriff of an old, red neck western town. When he introduces himself to the townspeople, they all pull guns on him. Then he pulls his own gun and points it at himself, saying "Don't move or the N* gets it." The people all lower their weapons like a bunch of idiots. That's our Dems.

When Bush puts on his "straight face" and opens his pie hole about how catastrophic the consequences of failure in Iraq would be, we should one-up him. We should enhance the fear and make it palpable, nourish the claustrophobia and sense of loss. People fear traps, and Bush has us in a trap. People hate to realize loss, and Bush has brought us a sickening, unrecoverable loss. Every time Bush scares people about the war, the emotions of fear, nausea, loss, and anger should be channeled right to their obvious root cause: Bush himself. The people will not make that connection unless the Dems' beat a path to it.

We have to stop letting Bush get away with these ploys. We need to get in the game.

You're doing a heck of a job there sport.