This COULD be Tough Love Day for welfare moms and Iraqi officials

Today the President will issue the most sweeping reforms in the rules for welfare administration in ten years.

Look out, Welfare Moms! You see...

• Often the Government Hand that is trying to Help You is actually Purpetuating your Plight. By forcing you out of the program, we're helping you help yourself!
• Yet the people administering the Program are certain that it cannot be drawn back. A hint here is that the continuance of the program perpetuates their job security interests.
• It's a distinctly American Value that you are responsible for your own welfare (and happiness, for that matter)

That is why we've sent more than 7 million of you - 60% per the 1996 enrollment - off the program in the past 10 years, and today place another 50% of you in our sights. We hope you understand.

And you, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and other Iraqi ministers? You have nothing to worry about!

• It is clear that the US presence in Iraq is a major source of chaos in your country, and it makes a great deal of sense to most Americans and apparently General Casey that announcing staged troop withdrawals is a sound technique for catalyzing your government into a winning track.
• Just as with the welfare program, the people administering our presence are certain that it cannot be drawn back. A hint here is that the continuance of the occupation serves their interests in maintaining contractor pay-outs, and establishing military control of your oil as more than a dozen bases are built.
• Yes, don't worry about US troop withdrawals. As for self-reliance and individual responsibility, that's an American Value we haul out for the disadvantaged - not people with valuable energy assets we want our hands on!

Hmmm... Honorable lawmakers, politicans and thought leaders from either side of the aisle could be citing Tough Love as an honorable, American rationale for a publicized schedule of troop withdrawals. This could be Tough Love Day both in the economically depressed areas of the US - Mississippi, Alabama, Michigan - and in the government halls of Iraq, but don't hold your breath. All the tough love talk will be for the disadvantaged among us.

Shame on us!