Hagel: Iraq growing more like Vietnam... Bush should meet with protesting mom http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/08/18/hagel.iraq/ Friday, August 19, 2005 Posted: 0335 GMT (1135 HKT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska on Thursday said the United States is "getting more and more bogged down" in Iraq and stood by his comments that the White House is disconnected from reality and losing the war. The longer U.S. forces remain in Iraq, he said, the more it begins to resemble the Vietnam war. Hagel mocked Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion in June that the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes," saying the U.S. death toll has risen amid insurgent attacks. "Maybe the vice president can explain the increase in casualties we're taking," the Nebraskan told CNN. "If that's winning, then he's got a different definition of winning than I do." .... "The casualties we're taking, the billion dollars a week we're putting in there, the kind of commitment we've got -- we're not going to be able to sustain it," he said. Iraq and Vietnam still have more differences than similarities, he said, but "there is a parallel emerging." "The longer we stay in Iraq, the more similarities will start to develop, meaning essentially that we are getting more and more bogged down, taking more and more casualties, more and more heated dissension and debate in the United States," Hagel said. Hagel also did not back away from comments he made in June to U.S. News & World Report that "the White House is completely disconnected from reality" and "the reality is that we're losing in Iraq." "It gives me no great pleasure to have said that and to say that now," he said Thursday. He said the U.S. death toll has continued to rise "at a very significant rate -- more dead, more wounded, less electricity in Iraq, less oil being pumped in Iraq, more insurgent attacks, more insurgents coming across the border, more corruption in the government." ... On another Iraq-related issue, Hagel said Bush made the wrong decision by not meeting again with Cindy Sheehan, a mother of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq who has camped outside the president's Texas ranch. (Full story) Sheehan "deserves some consideration, and I think that should have been done right from the beginning," Hagel said, noting that Bush did meet with her shortly after her son's death last year. "I think the wise course of action, the compassionate course of action, the better course of action would have been to immediately invite her in to the ranch. It should have been done when this whole thing started. Listen to her."
Wow, not even the party line can protect Bush any more. Fiscal conservatives like Hagel have to be absolutely livid with the position the White House has put us in. I just can't wait to see how Bush will try to deal with this if he writes his memoirs. I mean, the guy is singularly responsible for the death of tens of thousands of people, chaos throughout an entire country, and a once economically strong country that's drowning in deficits.
