Senator Lugar is now complaining that John Kerry has taken his criticism against the Bush administration and its “incompetence” in Iraqi reconstruction out of context. Lugar said:

I don’t think Sen. Kerry’s use of my name or John McCain or even Colin Powell will make any difference in the election.

Lugar, when talking last month about how only about $1 billion has been spent on Iraqi reconstruction out of the $18.4 billion appropriated by Congress, said, “This is the incompetence in the administration.”

Lugar can complain all he wants to, but I heard him piling on President Bush myself on one of the Sunday shows and entered a post about it. If I’m not mistaken Senator Biden was going on and on about how poorly Bush was handling Iraq in terms of the reconstruction and in the slow training of the Iraqi forces and Senator Lugar didn’t raise a finger to object. He just chimed in about how incompetent Bush has been on this score.

Biden has shown himself to be one of the most bitterly partisan advocates for Senator Kerry, being one of his best friends in the Senate. And Lugar jumped at the chance to suck up to Biden and the rest of the liberal culture that day. I was extremely disappointed in Lugar and I am unsympathetic with his protest that he was taken out of context. If he was, why was I upset with him? And I think when he says his comments won’t hurt the president’s reelection campaign he is engaging in wishful thinking, because he will be quite the unpopular guy if we find that he’s wrong.

I have no idea whether anyone will pay attention, but I do know that every time a Republican joins one of their beltway Democratic friends to blame Bush, the mainstream media acts like he’s the second coming, to wit: Lincoln Chaffey. If Lugar didn’t want his comments used against President Bush, why did he use the word “incompetence?” Shameful, in my opinion, not because he attacked a Republican, but because he was wrong and attacked a fellow Republican.