Bush "Disconnected from Reality"

Hagel's comments, which appear in today's edition of U.S. News and World Reports, might be nothing new coming from Democrats, but they represented some of the harshest talk by Bush's fellow Republicans to date.  Unlike Bush and his neo-con, starry-eyed, disconnected-from-reality advisors, Hagel believes that the "reality is that we're losing in Iraq." Hagel adds that fellow Republicans are coming increasinlty to share his views on this subject, and apparently on the Bush Adminisration as well.

Here's a graph, created by Ed Stephan at Western Washington University, which illustrates Hagel's point extremely well.  Notice the trend line of U.S. military deaths in Iraq going up.  In the reality-based world, that's not called "winning."  Apparently it is, however, in Bush/DeLay world.

Then there's the increasing strain on our military as Army recruitment dries up.  Here are excerpts from a discussion on Meet the Press yesterday between Tim Russert and Senator John McCain (R-AZ):

MR. RUSSERT: We have considerable commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, deployments. These were the headlines that greeted Americans just last week. "Just over 5,000 new recruits entered Army boot camp in May. ... Early last month, the Army ... lowered its long-stated May goal to 6,700 recruits from 8,050. Compared with the original target, the Army achieved only 62.6 percent of its goal for the month [a shortfall of almost 40 percent]." What will happen if for the next year the recruitment for the volunteer Army falls 40 percent short of the goal?

SEN. McCAIN: We're in trouble.

Now wait a minute, I could have sworn that President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" two years ago from the deck of an aircraft carrier. And wasn't that not long after he taunted Iraqi insurgents to "bring it on" to our troops over there (while he, conveniently, sat behind layers of Secret Service protection in the fortified White House)?  Well, as of today, the "mission" has most definitively NOT been "accomplished," while Bush's "bring it on" machismo has been more than answered by Iraq insurgents.  Congratulations.  (Oh, and how's the North Korean nuclear program doing these days, by the way?)

The scary thing is, all this part of a pattern in which Bush and his far-right cronies are completely, utterly disconnected from reality.  Whether it's having an oil industry lobbyist doctor government reports on global warming, threatening expert witnesses to "soften" tobacco testimony, or simply lying point blank about a phantom connection between Saddam Husssein and 9/11, it's all part of the same reality disconnect. 

And guess what, Virginians?  People like Jerry Kilgore, Bill Bolling, and Bob McDonnell are all cut from the same mold as Bush and Company.  And we wonder why Kilgore doesn't want to speak in public about his views?  Why he won't get on stage with two tough debaters, Russ Potts and Tim Kaine?  Of course Kilgore's terrified; he knows very well that he's wrong on issue after issue, so what else can he do but keep his own mouth shut and let his henchmen like Scott Howell do their usual smear jobs.  That, my friends, is simply the Right Wing Republican way.

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