Waking up every morning it’s getting more difficult to read the news and discover more people have caught the Surrender Flu. This malady appears to be extremely contagious, especially in the halls of Congress. As the surge continues to progress in Iraq, the surrender flu spreads, infecting even Republican leaders in the House.

Symptoms seem to be an initial reticence to speak boldly in support of President Bush’s new strategy, followed by a feverish need to propose a non-binding resolution to enforce benchmarks. (as if a war could ever be successfully fought in paint by numbers tactics )

Symptom number three invariably results in the victim of Surrender Flu holding a news conference to announce that in order to help our efforts in Iraq we must tell the Iraqis that this is their last chance. The chief symptom of Surrender Flu seems to be the loss of logic and backbone in the “victim.”

Election season seems to bring a much more virulent epidemic infecting high-risk politicians: those who are up for re-election or running for President.

Some of the Surrender Flu victims claim that they can sleep well at night while others become quite irritable and resentful.

There are known carriers of the Surrender Flu.

Most patients develop a severe hatred of President Bush.

Wesley Pruden writes about these mad and treacherous times……..

John Warner called in an impressionable young reporter for The Post to boast, despite “the guilt he still carries because of the Vietnam War,” of how he had “grown” into someone mellow enough to sleep better than a man in his ninth decade should expect to (though he didn’t say he could still sleep through the whole night).

“I gotta tell you,” he told his interviewer, “I’ve gotten to that wonderful age in life — I don’t worry. If you do what in your heart you feel is right, go to sleep. Don’t worry. I go to sleep and I don’t worry.”

It’s nice not to worry, and nice to see an old man’s guilt finally assuaged, but it’s not so nice to think of how guilt is assuaged by the blood of young men abandoned to a whim of the transient opinion of a fickle public. It’s a Washington thing.

Welcome Hugh Hewitt readers!

Welcome Tom Delay readers!

UPDATE: BizzyBlog has some benchmarks for Boehner. Hat tip: Instapundit