Hagel: Bush "Disconnected From Reality"

I think someone has seen the poll showing more than half of Americans now think the Iraq invasion was a mistake, not to mention the daily reports of dozens of innocent Iraqis dying in the streets. Here's AFP on Nebraska's own Chuck Hagel opening his eyes:

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel slammed the George W. Bush administration's Iraq policy as "disconnected from reality" in some of the harshest comments to date about the war from a member of the president's own party.

Hagel, a top Senate Republican said to have presidential aspirations, said in an interview in US News and World Report, set to hit newsstands Monday, that US troops are "losing" the Iraq war, and that "things aren't getting better, they're getting worse."

"The White House is completely disconnected from reality," said Hagel. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq," said Hagel, who added that increasingly, fellow Republicans are coming to share his view.

"More and more of my colleagues up here are concerned," he said.

For once, I'm not going to say a thing about Hagel's suspect motives and his history of shamelessly buckling to Bush's will after flirting with doing the right thing. No, I'm just going to appreciate that, for today, he's saying something that needs to be said - something that should have been said long ago.

Thank you, Senator Hagel.