It's Gonna Be Chaos." And on top of that, a $13 billion dollar war against a country that poses no immediate threat to us. That's over a hundred thousand lives that could be spent on education, healthcare, infrastructure, the environment, our citizens and their welfare, our defense, etc. I ask you, honestly. Why are we still sending our troops into Iraq? Why do we have troops in so many countries? Why does an over-bloated, over-reaching government want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a war in a country that poses no threat to our national security, just so that Halliburton and other big businesses can make a buck off it? If you know me, or just look at my blog entries (here, here, here and here), you know that I'm no fan of the President. But I have to say, he doesn't come off as particularly stupid in this interview with David Letterman. I'll take him for his word that he just doesn't understand that the war will never be won militarily. But he is wrong about not understanding that the war cannot be won militarily. It's the lack of understanding that makes him dangerous and the reason why the people who really need to be looking over their shoulders are the citizens and the soldiers in the military. The problem is that when a politician takes one side and doesn't understand the other, he, or she is more likely to get a majority vote and move ahead with his program no matter what it is. We do need to get American soldiers and Iraqi civilians off the street and get them into a safer area. If we don't do that, our soldiers are gonna get killed. So I don't have to agree with him in this case. I just need to know that he understands the real reasons for why it's necessary for the US to engage in this war. And, frankly, I don't think the President does. And he is making a mistake in making it personal and not taking responsibility for the cost in dollars and lives that we are incurring by sending troops into this unneeded war. He needs to get down from that stump and into the White House and run this war the way it should be run: by a professional commander in chief, not some celebrity wanna-be politician who thinks that the military can win wars with nothing more than a slogan. We don't need to go to war with anyone. We don't need to take sides. We don't need to pick sides. All we have to do is sit it out. But what does the Congress know about that? The whole world knows that we have troops all over the world. So let's see what the next President will be doing when he's sitting down to an interview with David Letterman: SEN. BILL NELSON: Mr. President, can you tell me why we're in Afghanistan? PRESIDENT BUSH: I think I made it clear. SEN. NELSON: Did you make it clear? PRESIDENT BUSH: I made it clear! SEN. NELSON: Can you tell me why? PRESIDENT BUSH: It's a war that we're not winning. We're spending over a billion dollars a week in a war that we're not winning. It's gonna be, ultimately, a long war. And when people ask me why are we going into a country whose leadership is less than stellar, I say 'because they hate us.' Mr. President, does it make sense to be spending $13 billion dollars a week over there, when it is our national security interests that require us to defeat al Qaeda, defeat the Taliban, and to make the world safe for democracy. Can you tell me where our money is going? PRESIDENT BUSH: I think I answered it. SEN. NELSON: We're spending money that doesn't belong to us. PRESIDENT BUSH: I don't think you get my point. SEN. NELSON: They're people being harmed by our government. PRESIDENT BUSH: No, they're not. SEN. NELSON: This is wrong. PRESIDENT BUSH: It is wrong. SEN. NELSON: We need to cut the money off there. PRESIDENT BUSH: No we don't. SEN. NELSON: The people are being harmed, Mr. President. PRESIDENT BUSH: I want to cut it off, don't you? SEN. NELSON: Yes, sir. PRESIDENT BUSH: Why would you ever not want to cut off a fund that doesn't belong to us? SEN. NELSON: I think it's wrong. PRESIDENT BUSH: You think it's wrong? SEN. NELSON: Absolutely. PRESIDENT BUSH: And if it were somebody else? The Democrats didn't run on cutting off $10 billion in Iraq. SEN. NELSON: We have to consider all of the aspects of war and conflict, Mr. President. This isn't just a partisan political thing. This is a moral question. This is a moral question. And I think there are many other things that we can do that would help other people in this country. PRESIDENT BUSH: But Mr. Senator, isn't it a matter of national security that we be in Afghanistan? SEN. NELSON: Why do we need to be in Afghanistan? PRESIDENT BUSH: I think I answered that. SEN. NELSON: It's a no-win situation there. PRESIDENT BUSH: No, I said it's not over there. We're over there for a reason. We're still over there because of the terrorists. SEN. NELSON: And where are we at in Afghanistan? PRESIDENT BUSH: The terrorists are over there. SEN. NELSON: How many Americans have died in Afghanistan? PRESIDENT BUSH: If you got bin Laden, he wouldn't be over there. He'd be in hell or under the ground. That's where he'd be if this government got bin Laden. And the reason why he's not in hell is because there are a lot of people over there trying to kill him. He's an evil man. He's engaged in mass murder. And I think in the context of a broader war on terror, Iraq is one of the places in the world that al Qaeda and the terrorists are most focused on attacking the American people. That's the reason we're over there. SEN. NELSON: We're talking about cutting off funding in Afghanistan, which is killing soldiers and which we can't win. PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, no, they're not over there. We're over there because al Qaeda attacked us. That's why we're over there. And by the way, don't you think that we have the right to defend ourselves? What, are you afraid of our military? SEN. NELSON: Mr. President, what I'm concerned about is, in my eyes, there is not one shred of evidence that Osama bin Laden is in Afghanistan. You can't get one shred of evidence that he's there. The reason we're over there, sir, is that we're going to get bin Laden. If we don't get him here, we're going to get him in your backyard. That's what this war is about. That's what this is all about. PRESIDENT BUSH: You can't tell that to the parents of those who have been killed on those streets of New York and Pennsylvania and in Connecticut. We are fighting a totalitarian ideology. If we allow this conflict to end, there will be an axis of evil from Korea to the Middle East and beyond. There will be a war on Christianity. If we lose the war in Afghanistan, we will find ourselves fighting the same war in a place like Iran or Pakistan or Iraq. Or wherever it is they start killing people and trying to kill people. This is a war that has to be won. We have a military that's in the best shape that we've been in since before Pearl Harbor. The men and women in uniform are the best trained, the best equipped, best prepared, the best led in the history of the world. If they're properly trained and properly equipped, Mr. President, they can do the job. And it's our job to have somebody that can make the decisions to get this job done. Bush got defensive when he was confronted with a video tape of one of his aides saying that "We're fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them over here." And then, when asked, "What happened to "Mission Accomplished," responded that maybe he had misspoken. Then, he changed the subject and was off on his merry way. But when he did come back on the subject, he was quite open about the fact that no one wants to lose in Afghanistan and then have all of these terrorists over here. But he has trouble coming to grips with the fact that just because we're sending soldiers there, doesn't mean that