Reality Bites

Even an Administration that denies reality sometimes has to confront it. And in recent days the Bush White House has run smack into assorted realities. So far the results have not been good for the Bush crowd.

On the two issues he has pressed most in his second term--the Iraq War and Social Security--George W. Bush has been challenged by Republicans eager for exit strategies for both. In mid-June two conservative House Republicans--Ron Paul and Walter Jones Jr.--joined two progressive House Democrats--Dennis Kucinich and Neil Abercrombie--to introduce legislation that would compel Bush to begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq by October 2006. This followed a decision in late May by five Republicans to join 123 Democrats in a vote that urged Bush to devise a withdrawal timetable. Congress is still far from an antiwar majority, but the GOP-controlled House International Relations Committee did vote 32 to 9 to call on the Bush Administration to produce a plan for Iraq that would allow the United States to reduce its number of troops there.

As the war proceeds with little indication of progress and the polls register more popular opposition, Republican members of Congress (with the next Congressional election fast approaching) have reason to be nervous and to seek distance from Bush, especially since the Administration continues to meet the bad news from Iraq with happy talk. Dick Cheney insists the insurgency is in its "last throes," yet military officials predict years of a continued US presence. The Administration's ever widening credibility gap is further cause for Republican unease. Senator Chuck Hagel, an influential Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, recently exploded, "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

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