Putz thinks holding Bush accountable will "hurt the country."

Those 11 White Flaggers who dared to tell the Great Leader the truth are a bunch of squeamish, myopic defeatists.

REPUBLICAN MODERATES getting restive on the war. I think this is shortsighted and wrong and likely to hurt the country. On the other hand, for the Bush Administration it's a reality. I've mentioned the three-year-rule before, but we're now past the four-year mark (five if you count Afghanistan). If Bush were a great communicator, he'd be able to help himself some, but I doubt Reagan could have held things together a whole lot better. The White House and Pentagon need to be figuring out how to deal with this, and what constructive fallback positions they can prepare.

Maybe I'm missing something, but just how is it "shortsighted" to tell Bush the truth-- that he's got zero credibility on Iraq? Even if you think the Surge is the magic bullet that will put Humpty back together again, as Putz apparently does, doesn't it matter that no one believes the Commander Guy?

One lawmaker told Bush that voters back home favored a withdrawal even if it meant the war was judged a loss. Representative Tom Davis told Bush that the president's approval rating was at 5 percent in one section of his northern Virginia district.

5 percent. Think about that.

Putz also absolutely refuses to acknowledge that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are going into their 4th and 5th years specifically because of the criminally incompetent mismanagement of those wars -- which is precisely why no one believes Bush and Cheney, who've insisted all along that we were winning and the liberal media was just distorting the truth.

And how is holding the President accountable "wrong"? If the Republicans taken this rather mild step (a meeting behind closed doors! such audacity!) with Bush 3 years ago, things might be different today in Baghdad. But anyone who criticized the prosecution of the war, whether it be Murtha or Hagel or the generals, were shouted down by Putz and the rest, smeared as disgraces or cowards.

And it's precisely that failure of the Republicans and their enablers to hold Bush and Cheney even minimally accountable since 9/11 that's been the problem.

That's what's hurt the country, Putz. Not a few Republicans meeting with Bush to tell him the truth.

UPDATE

Yglesias notes,

I'd say the main takeaway from moderate congressional Republicans' big meeting at the White House is that most of these "moderate" Republicans are what you might prefer to call vulnerable Republicans. After all, if there was actually anything moderate about their opinions of Iraq they wouldn't have decided that 2002 was a good year for lockstep support of the Bush administration's Iraq policy that was well followed-up by offering lockstep support of the Bush administration's Iraq policy in 2003, after which 2004 turned out to be an ideal moment for lockstep support of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, much as 2005 was also a good year for lockstep support of the Bush administration's Iraq policy and, indeed, that in 2006 lockstep support of the Bush administration's Iraq policy was just what the doctor ordered.

Even today, the moderates aren't doing anything -- collaborating, say, with the less die-hard anti-war House Dems to pass a bill -- that will change America's Iraq policy. Instead, they're just putting up a big showy display, "telling the president that conditions needed to improve markedly by fall or more Republicans would desert him on the war." And in the fall, what will they do? And by then, do they really expect people to give them any credit for it?

But their not doing anything is wrong and will hurt the country.