What’s not to get?

Americans. Hate. This. War.

Instead of bolstering support and getting things back on track, McCain and Graham’s stunt yesterday – and that is exactly what it was, it was a stunt - seems to be backfiring big-time. The six killed a mile away has not helped – and when Lindsey Graham talks about the killer deal he got on those rugs, I want to scream. How much, exactly, did that little juggernaut cost the American taxpayers? (I would think Lindsey is doing well enough as a Senator that he could have bought those rugs from a merchant at home and not cost the American taxpayers all that money, and potentially six troops their lives, but that’s just me, and I’m not a conservative, so I don’t understand...)

While I’m on the subject of visits by dignitaries, just let me toss something out there. I mean no disrespect (or maybe I do – it’s kinda hard to tell where that line is right now) but I gotta say this, as a former resident of multiple military bases throughout my lifetime –

We. Hate. Dignitaries.

We hate visits by potentates stateside, I guaran-damn-tee that none of those troops who swept the market and escorted the senators will ever vote for either one of them. If we could have harnessed the energy from the eye-rolling that most certainly took place…

I have never felt so hapless or helpless in my entire life as I do when I think about this clusterfuck of a war that these knuckleheads thought would be such a swell idea. Thanks a lot, Neocon assholes.

But there seems to be a faint glimmer of hope.

Today, Senate Majority Leader Reid joined Senator Feingold and co-sponsored legislation that will cut off funding in one year. From the Washington Post:

Reid had previously opposed setting a firm end date for the war, a stance he has backed away from in recent months as others in his party moved to increase pressure on Bush on the issue. He officially converted after visiting wounded soldiers last week at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

"Talk about a way to be depressed," Reid said yesterday in a talk-radio interview with liberal host Ed Schultz. "The American people, I repeat, have to understand what is happening, it is not worth another drop of American blood in Iraq. It is not worth another damaged brain."

Senator, I totally agree. What can we realistically accomplish? The Surge would be better described as a Splurge. Violence is going up, rather than down, and all the insisting in the world can’t overcome the reality of the grand cock-up.

Even close advisers are abandoning the sinking ship. Matthew Dowd – may his son who is soon to deploy come home safe and sound…and soon - spoke out yesterday in the New York Times . Vic Gold has had a similar epiphany without a child headed to Iraq.

The game is over, and we didn’t win. If we keep tilting at windmills over there, and that is what the plan seems to be, it will take decades to retstore our military. Personnel and materiel are worn out. What isn't worn out is broken. That is reality.

What I want, I can’t have – I want this never to have happened. I want my country to have never gone collectively insane and I want 3250 American troops resurrected, thousands of limbs reattached, and all those traumatic brain injuries undone. I want to wake up and none of this ever happened.

I want to wake up and know bin Laden is in a prison cell.

But since I can’t have that, I will settle for bringing them home.

In fact, it is the least I am willing to settle for.