The Iraqi Parliamentary Vacation

So the Iraqi Parliament wants to take a vacation. From what, exactly are they taking this vacation? I’ve seen some blogs implying that they have been on vacation for the past few years. I have seen others calling this a “2-month, Bush-style” vacation. Well you all might just want to take a step back and grow up for a few minutes.

Let’s talk about Bush first. It doesn’t matter how long his “vacations” are. They aren’t vacations as we at the bottom know them. They are work-at-home days. The press camps out on his lawn, not far from where Cindy Sheehan protests, while his staff and cabinet prepare him for a press conference every few days. If any of you out there do any less that that on YOUR vacation (and you and I both know you do a lot less) then please just shut up about Bush’s vacations. However, Bush is not entirely without fault in the Iraq vacation matter, as we will see shortly.

As we try to Americanize the Iraqi government, what is the example the U.S. Congress provides? It took a 2-week Easter vacation. The Democrat-led Congress left town after half-passing a bad surrender bill that everyone in the world knew had no chance at all of being signed into law. Anyone care to guess who the first people were to whine about the Iraqi Parliament following suit? Yup. It was leaders of the Democrat-led Congress. Score one more for the U.S. Congress.

Now back to Bush. As I wrote in my 3/31/07 article “Congress Doesn't Even Disgrace Itself Well” the President could have called an emergency session of Congress to get this urgent work done, thus depriving Nancy Pelosi of her Syrian vacation. He didn’t. His de-facto support of the Congress’ disgraceful vacation further sent the message to Iraq that this is an OK thing to do.

I would be curious to know when the founding fathers of the United States went on vacation. I doubt that there were many during the revolutionary war and was unable to find any, although I am not enough of a scholar to say definitively that there were none. If anyone knows, please share.

Perhaps the poetic justice on the subject of an Iraqi Parliamentary vacation is found in the following question(s) to Parliament members. Where will you go on vacation? Syria (You might want to get some tips from Nancy Pelosi)? Iran (I think Vladimir Putin might have some info you could use.)? Israel (You might get killed by your fellow mosque-goers.)? Please let us know where you went and how that worked out for you, especially if you were able to make it back alive.