Dog Pound

Dick Cheney accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) of being cynical for pursuing a defeatist war strategy, “because it will bring his party more seats in the next election.”

Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Of course, it was the administration which launched this ignoble defeat of ours and, for a time, reaped rewards at the polls.

Not one to be outdone, Reid said, “I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with the administration’s chief attack dog.”

Woof! Woof!

That’s pretty good, but we’ve been warming up to the understated Reid recently.

And Harry’s not the only that’s barked back lately.

highwayscribery missed it, but Bush’s schnauzer must have said something about the Democrats assuming the form of “that old party of the ’70s” (Acid, Amnesty, Abortion!), which was led by none other than George McGovern (above).

And the “L.A. Times” opened up some space for McGovern to respond.

Woof! Woof!

The former Senator from South Dakota and Democratic nominee in 1972 owned up, proudly, regarding is opposition to both the war in Vietnam and the stinker in Iraq, because, and the scribe quotes, “these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world.”

Which is the even-tempered bark.

Here’s the bite:

“In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat - a record matched by President Bush.”

Ouch! er, um, Woof!

You know what McGovern’s saying here and that’s why (r)epublicans had to nail Clinton on a sex scandal and dance all over Jack Kennedy’s hallowed grave with stories of sybaritic (mis)behavior.

As the Los Angeles/Baton Rouge poet Jesse once proclaimed at an elegant Mob event in Hollywood: “Presidents should be allowed to have testes!”

“One point I do agree with Cheney on,” McGovern continued. “Today’s Democrats are taking positions on the Iraq war similar to the views I held toward the Vietnam War. But that is all to the good...Beyond the deaths of more than 3,100 young Americans and an estimated 600,000 Iraqis, we have spent nearly $500 billion on the war, which has dragged on longer than World War II.

The Democrats are right. Let’s bring our troops home from this hopeless war.”

Still burning from his denigration as a “socialist poet” (see Oliver Stone’s “Nixon”) and being robbed by burglars in the employ of the White House during his presidential run, McGovern gets sidetracked for a moment.

But that’s his right and privilege from our strictly anarcho-syndicalist perspective:

“Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history resign the presidency.

Who was the real loser of ’72?”

(all of us)

And the real losers now?

Guys like these.