Letter: Same old tired routine in Washington

Sunday, June 18, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.

Every day in Washington is now Groundhog Day. With elections looming in November, members of Congress are either taking cover from their own fallout or extolling their newly found, but usually imaginary, virtues.

The White House represents the epitome of this duck-and-cover routine. Recently revamping the more positive portions of this administration, Mr. Bush and his cadre are launching an aggressive media assault on truth while hiding or obfuscating their many failures.

The most recent case in point is Mr. Bush's PR trip to Iraq, where he said he was encouraged to find strong Iraqi leadership and a fledgling democracy. He did fail to mention that all this new democratic leadership, both theirs and ours, was encapsulated, held hostage, within the Green Zone. This is a relatively small area in central Baghdad that is more heavily fortified than Hitler's famed World War II bunker.

Putting aside the Iraq fiasco, this is still the most disappointing administration since Herbert Hoover's. Major failures abound in foreign policy and the reforms needed for deficit reduction and to maintain the solvency of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is far easier to cite these and other failures than to dredge up any positive results. The only thing that could be more devastating is that come November, the electorate remains uninformed and that opposition candidates are no more visionary than those currently in office.

Richard Rychtarik, Las Vegas