I'm convinced that die-hard supporters of President Bush and the Iraq war are disconnected from reality. It's been written that perhaps the GOP party faithful live in a parallel universe where white is black and black is white. I guess it makes sense since Bush's brain- Karl Rove's most successful political strategy is to directly attack a challenger's strength, which seems suicidal but when executed correctly like the attacks on Senator Kerry's conduct and record of service in Vietnam are brilliantly successful.

Despite this knowledge I was still stunned to read the headline, "Graham says U.S. 'screwed up' in Iraq" in this week's Greenville News. I expected to read the article and learn of some sort of plan proposed by our United States Senator to rectify the "screw ups" inherent in this unnecessary and seemingly endless war in Iraq. Imagine my shock to read that despite the ongoing slaughter of civilians and U.S. soldiers Senator Lindsey Graham maintains that the fundamental idea of the war was still correct. This is what I call a fundamental absence of leadership. It's like the definition of stupidity keep repeating the same failed actions over and over in the hope that the outcome will be different. Why in the hell should Americans trust or even respect the Bush administration's leadership at this point? You would have to be in complete denial or disconnected from reality to continue to have faith that this pack of idiots would somehow get it together and conditions would dramatically improve. Maybe the fact that I don't watch cable news, never watch FOX and don't listen to conservative talk radio renders me incapable of understanding the logic of people who would not only maintain their support for Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and the GOP cabal but urge others to do the same and call them traitors if they point out obvious flaws in this logic.

We now have a bi-partisan, Republican led Congressional review of all the stated reasons for the Iraq War and many detailed on-going reviews of the conduct of the war and all of these reports say there was no link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Al Qaeda wasn't even welcome in Iraq until after we invaded their country, deposed their leader, destroyed their borders and ignited historical hatred between the Sunnis, the Shias and the Kurds. If anyone in the Bush administration had bothered to read all of the intelligence reports and perhaps a history book or two they would have seen that Saddam Hussein may have been a vicious thug who killed thousands of his own people but he wasn't a religious fanatic and actually feared Osama bin Laden's influence on the region. Before we invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein was actually powerless to build or assemble weapons of mass destruction. All of his weaponry had been destroyed after the Gulf War and U.N. inspection teams led by Hans Blix were in the process of verifying this information, when President Bush ordered them out of the country and launched an unprovoked and senseless war.

Senator Graham admits that our current leadership, "Underestimated how hard it would be," No duh, but in the same breath asks us to continue to support failed policies, flawed logic and in essence a rudderless ship. This isn't leadership, this is blind faith and with 3,000 of our soldiers dead and thousands more maimed and permanently damaged it's time to put a stop to it.

I'm amused by the GOP faithful's ongoing criticism of the Democrats lack of a plan for ending the Iraq war. I heard someone on the radio say this was akin to a guy who convinces a buddy to rob a store with him. During the robbery, the cops arrive on the scene and at that point the lead robber turns to his friend and says, 'What's the plan now?' The Republicans, who sold the American public on this war, were apparently so busy working on their game plan to fix the intelligence and fear monger that they forgot to prepare for the aftermath and the occupation. Now that things are screwed up beyond repair, they want their Democratic mommy to come in and make everything better. The Democrats have presented numerous plans to pull out of Iraq but they aren't going anywhere in the Republican dominated House and Senate.

The only way to right this sinking ship is to bring the House of Representatives and hopefully the Senate back under Democratic control and restore the balance of power. I think we've all seen that the Republican Party and their cult members have made an absolute mess of things and it's going to take fresh leadership to restore oversight over the executive branch and hopefully come up with some bi-partisan plan to get the hell out of Iraq as quickly as possible.

I'm voting a straight Democratic Party ticket on November 7th and I'm going to work my ass off between now and then to make sure everyone I know does the same.