How “Unromantic” Can The V.A. Get?

President George W. Milhous Bush yesterday when discussing the war in Afghanistan with civilian and military personnel (here)…

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

After a certain point, pointing out the failings of this numbskull kind of becomes similar (I would guess) to the same sensation you feel after punching a wall made out of Silly Putty for about a half hour or so.

What best describes that phrase? Naïve? Misinformed? Blindly optimistic? Inappropriate?

STOO-PID??!!

Well, while trying to figure out how to respond, I finally decided that the best way to do so would be to try and figure out what is going on with the Veterans Administration; you know, that agency whose title is more or less self-explanatory formerly run by Repug “rainmaker” Jim Nicholson before he was replaced by Dr. James Peake?

I was hoping that Peake had somehow straightened out that maligned department, but apparently not...

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 29 (IPS) - Another high-ranking George W. Bush administration official has resigned. The Department of Veterans Affairs Undersecretary for Benefits Daniel Cooper quit Thursday amid mounting criticism over a backlog of disability claims for injured veterans that runs six months long and an appearance he made in a fundraising video for an evangelical Christian organisation where he said Bible study was more important than doing his job.

And why exactly should I be surprised by stories like this by now?

Cooper has been under fire for using his office to proselytise for evangelical Christianity ever since he appeared in a 2004 fundraising video for Christian Embassy, which carries out missionary work among the Washington elite as part of the Campus Crusade for Christ.

In the video, Cooper says of his Bible study, "It's not really about carving out time, it really is a matter of saying what is important. And since that's more important than doing the job -- the job's going to be there, whether I'm there or not."

Well, apparently, it seems that the job remains of course, but Cooper will now go off to study the Bible while the backlog of veterans in need of VA services continues to build.

And given all of this, I think it’s important to revisit some meanings of the word “romantic” as used by Dubya concerning our military, and those would be “imaginative, not practical,” and “imaginary or fictitious.”

That seems to describe the possibility that this agency will ever operate efficiently under the Bushco gang.