Bush Endorses VA Chief - 26.5 Million Vets Face Identity Theft

Bush, in a "heckuva job" moment, endorsed Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson just days after it was revealed that 26.5 million veterans, myself included, face identity theft from the loss of a computer stolen three weeks ago. That's a lot of time for someone to live high on the hog on my credit. Fortunately I have a credit watch on my accounts. Experian and the other credit reporting agencies should be facing a flood of veterans requesting credit watches on their accounts but they're not because the VA didn't bother to tell us our social security numbers, birthdates and names were in the hands of someone with less than honorable intentions.

Of course, Bush has full faith and confidence in yet another screw-up appointee of his. Yet his defense of the VA's actions, cross your fingers and hope nothing happens, is indicative of the Bush doctrine: Hope is, to these misfits, a strategy. They hope, based on slimmer evidence than divinely caused miracles. Iraq was based on hope, the hope that a lot of things could go right. Katrina response was based on hope, the hope that things really weren't going to get bad and once they were, that they really weren't as bad as the pictures showed. Our energy policy is based on hope, the hope that there's a great, big, undiscovered oil field out there, if not underneath the U. S. underneath some friendly, hopefully stable government. Our environmental policy is based on hope, the hope that political appointees really do know more about climate, pollution, conservation and mankind's impact on it than scientists and that the scientists are wrong. Our fiscal policy is based on hope, the hope that the economy will grow fast enough to offset the deficits, both public and private, that we're accumulating. Time after time, the Bush Administration has shown their only strategy is hope and hope by itself makes a lousy strategy.

Based on the ineptitude shown by the Administration, I'd really like to see John Kerry's proposal put into law. We veterans should be given free credit reporting and monitoring for the rest of our lives based on the incompetence of the VA at safeguarding our information. We also need strong privacy regulations, although under the current information, privacy tends to take on a bit of a KGB-esque definition. And yes, this is definitely Boehner of the Week material, funny if it weren't so tragic.