Based on his voting record, we've always thought Democratic U.S. Representative Ike Skelton was secretly a Republican. That's why we were pleasantly surprised when Skelton wrote a March 18 letter to President George W. Bush, urging him to frickin' slow down his rush to war. Skelton, whose district includes Knob Noster's Whiteman Air Force Base (home of those stealthy B-2 bombers), is the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee and knows what he's talking about. He was all for war with Iraq, but he thought the president ought to take the long view before giving the go-ahead. Skelton wrote that he was worried about protracted urban combat in Baghdad, which would destroy the city's infrastructure and create a massive humanitarian crisis. He didn't want U.S. forces to have to spend forever separating squabbling Turks, Kurds, Shi'as and Sunnis. He imagined devastating scenarios in which U.S. troops would have to decontaminate entire cities full of civilian bodies after Saddam Hussein used biological and chemical weapons to stop advancing troops but killed his own people in the process. Skelton's list was long, and he hoped none of his fears would come true. In the end, his argument was simply that Bush ought to make a case for staying in Iraq "for the long haul, even with the economic and military burdens this will entail." OK, by then he was starting to sound like a Republican again. It didn't matter -- obviously Skelton's words fell on unsympathetic ears. But at least it didn't hurt for George W. Bush to hear a little cautionary wisdom from a member of his own party -- er, we mean a fellow hawk.
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