“With the deluge of negative news that we get daily, it’s just amazing to me that anybody would want to sign up,” Kansas Republican senator Pat Roberts threw in. Granted, the corporate media does its best to divert us away from the growing Iraq disaster, and minimizes the constant drone of bad news (increasing numbers of troops slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan), but things are so dismal they cannot cover it up completely, to the chagrin of Roberts and Inhofe. Naturally, when the semi-somnolent public gets a taste of all this bummer news, they tell their kids not to join up, keep that job at McDonalds (it beats coming home minus an arm, nose, and one eye), so the problem is one of perception, the media needs to do a better job at obfuscating the truth and gussying up reality with some grease paint. However, it is impossible to say anything good about the situation in Iraq and most people are beginning to realize the whole thing is a colossal failure (as polls indicate) and certainly not worth the “sacrifice,” i.e., coming home in one of those meticulously hidden flag-draped coffins flown in under the cover of darkness at Dover AFB.

So what to do? Inhofe and Roberts and the rest of the Republicans, so beholden to Bush and his camarilla of Straussian mass murderers, are not about the face the music—Americans are turning against the occupation in increasing numbers—and so we are hearing peeps and murmurs about the damn media, a corporate media that only partially reports the truth, a bloody reality they can hardly conceal with Brad and Angelina fluff or Kirsten Dunst on the American flag pabulum. Bitching about the media will not cut it and the recruitment numbers will continue to go down since most Americans are not masochists or do they have death wishes and the Bushcons have done a terrible job of “selling” the Iraq quagmire to anybody but the most brain-impaired who find themselves locked in a nightmare cycle of never-ending “tours” to Iraq and condemned to lives serving as virtual slaves for empire (the exits barred with stop-loss orders).

So the numbers will keep falling, less people will sign up and sacrifice their lives for the neocon-neolib criminal enterprise, perpetuated by guys who are big on invasions and occupations but small on selling them effectively (as Bush’s latest “speech” directed at a dwindling number of soldiers indicates). Inhofe and Roberts will splutter and blame all on a “liberal” media and hint that folks are simply un-American for not donating their lives to the empire and the end result will be less bullet-stoppers and the diminishing prospect for future invasions and occupations (as planned by the neocon-neolibs). In short, you can almost hear the “D” word jangling in the wind. Because these Republican blowhards are not going change the negative perception (now impossible to hide) imparted to the average kid from the cell phone and video game generation by a “liberal” media that only reports one-tenth of the horror story.

Either the Bushcons back down—and get the hell out of Iraq—or they start talking about bullet-stopper conscription. How much you want to bet they will not back down?