Blame it on the rain...

Ted Kennedy speaks. Bush should listen.

The United States should start to withdraw militarily and politically from Iraq and aim to pull out all troops as early as possible next year, Sen. Edward Kennedy said on Thursday.

After Sunday's Iraqi elections, Kennedy said President Bush should state he intends to negotiate a timetable with the new Iraqi government to draw down U.S. forces.

At least 12,000 U.S. troops should leave at once, Kennedy said, "to send a stronger signal about our intentions to ease the pervasive sense of occupation."

The Massachusetts Democrat, who opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, became the first senator to lay out a plan for Bush to start withdrawing troops a day after the Pentagon (news - web sites) warned lawmakers that strikes by insurgents may increase after Sunday's elections [...]

"We now have no choice but to make the best we can of the disaster we have created in Iraq," Kennedy in a speech to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "The current course is only making the crisis worse."

He said the indefinite presence of U.S. troops is "fanning the flames of conflict" in what has become "a war against the U.S. occupation."

Thank you Ted! Finally someone of national prominence is saying what a large percentage of the country has been feeling. Now I'm not sure if I even favor the complete removal of US forces, but we need to figure out when we can leave. Hopefully, with Kennedy coming out in favor of withdrawal, the nation can now have the debate. Too bad it looks like republicans are doing what they love to try: squashing debate by attacking the debater.

Glenn Reynolds, Ann Coulter, and FOX News hosts lashed out at Kennedy and the "Left" for calling bullshit what it is. Rather than question the bullshit rationales for war, and rather than question the incompetent waging of the war by this administration, they want to talk about Kennedy's patriotism.

Expect more of this. This war is long past lost. Time to pack it in, and save the lives of our men and women in uniforms left to be saved.

In the feverish minds of the war apologists, it doesn't matter that no WMDs were found, that torture chambers are still open for business, that this war is now rivaling Saddam's brutality for sheer number of Iraqis killed, that the Army, Marines, and National Guard are all having trouble recruiting, that our equipment is degrading to the point where we're creating a hollow military, that the war is costing us $200 billion and counting, that Israel is not safer as a result of this war, that nearly 1,600 allied troops and counting have died on this fool's errand, that the US's original choice to lead Iraq -- Chalabi -- was an Iranian spy who told our enemies that we had cracked their communications code, that most of Iraq is not under government control, that terrorists are now using the lawlessness in Iraq to recruit and train a whole new generation of terrorists, that our "Coalition of the Willing" is now a mere shell of its former self, that the world hates the United States, that the Euro is suddenly the hot currency, that Europe and Asia are both creating security organizations excluding the US, and that tens of thousands of our soldiers are coming home physically and mentally maimed.

None of that matters to them.

But they see the war getting out of hand. They've see our chances of victory go from little to nothing. And they've got to blame someone. Anyone. And of course, it can't be Saint George, because he's perfect and can do no wrong. So blame Kennedy. Blame Boxer. Blame France. Blame Canada. Because it is they who have botched up the Iraqi campaign to the point of no hope. If it wasn't for them, our troops would still be basking in a flood of rose petals.

But at the end of the day, whether they'll ever admit it or not -- we were right, they were wrong. Reality isn't too kind to faith-based lunatics.