It's a tad sad to watch President Bush's supporters struggle to deal with what's happening around him. A war going badly, while all pretend to see "a light at the end of the tunnel" -- (where have we heard that before) -- and at home, words being written that largely confirm the most damaging of assessments -- that his judgment and capabilities are suspect.

What's most distressing is that there's little way out. Except to wait until we can change who's in charge.

Listening to Condi Rice's testimony before the committee investigating the 9/11 attacks, one thing is eminently clear -- we are missing the only really important point. No one really thinks either the Clinton or Bush Administrations could have completely anticipated and possibly stopped the attacks. It's what's occurred afterwards that's important -- whether or not the Bush Administration was so grossly predisposed with wanting to get rid of Saddam Hussein that they took their eye off the ball. I have no doubt in my mind that we've adversely affected the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, and allowed Al-Qaeda to survive, by taking troops out of Afghanistan and sending them to Iraq -- which was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and was essentially irrelevant to the war on terrorism. THAT'S what will cost the Bush Administration the rest of it's support -- the colossal error of our time. Not whether or not 9/11 could have been prevented.

It’s the kind of statement that’s made just to drive right-wing talk-radio blowhards into a frenzy, delivered by the messenger they can’t resist. Yesterday, Ted Kennedy said publicly what lots of us have been thinking for a long time: The war in Iraq is “Bush’s Vietnam,”a fiasco of the highest order, with what should have been a predictable outcome – that, ultimately, we will have to look for a way to declare “victory with honor” and slink off into a corner, wondering what happened.

How could we have done this again? Did we learn nothing from the bitter experiences of a generation ago?

Apparently not. Or -- to judge by what I’m hearing from my conservative friends who continue to line up in mindless support of a fear-based cadre of arrogant people on whom the word “hubris” is lost – we learned the wrong things. The lesson of Vietnam is not that we need to have the courage to stick it out – the lesson is that we have to make sure we know what we’re doing before we do it. And – most importantly – we must have an “exit strategy.”

Remember that phrase? Isn’t that at the core of the “Powell Doctrine,” named after the man who was supposed to have the smarts and the experience to keep us from falling over the edge – that you don’t get into a conflict unless you intend to do whatever it takes to “win,” however that’s defined, and that you don’t stay one minute longer than that?

Am I a coward, or equally bad, a traitor, for asking these questions while our troops are over there in harm’s way, being picked off one a time? No – I’m a patriot who loves my country, and who thinks phrases like, “We’ve ONLY lost 600 lives so far” are despicable in their callousness.

I’ll have lots more to say on this shortly, but for now, leave it at this: Whether you bought the Bush Administration’s propaganda as to why we needed to “get Saddam” or not, no rationalization will cover now for a policy that is doomed to ultimate failure. Why? Because we will never have the willpower to stay in Iraq – or anywhere else in the Muslim world – long enough and in sufficient numbers to remake that part of the world in our own image.

So I say – get out, now. As fast as humanly possible. Before “Bush’s Vietnam” loses as many lives as did Johnson’s and Nixon’s.

That’s the lesson.

"Let my people go." To whom does this refer these days?

I guess I was "blogging" before there was a term for it. Gonna have to join the party formally.

. . . from a self-imposed silence. Stay tuned.