Must Be the Drugs and Booze...

Or something, because Shrubleroy's clearly delusional:

President George W. Bush, facing a mounting U.S. death toll in Iraq, predicted on Tuesday more tough fighting in 2006 but said there would be "more progress toward victory."

Bush, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said progress would come in Iraq's political process, reconstruction and the battle against insurgents during the year.

"We will see more tough fighting and we will see more sacrifice in 2006 because the enemies of freedom continue to sow violence and destruction. We'll also see more progress toward victory," Bush said.

He defined victory as a time when insurgents no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when Iraqi security forces can provide safety for their citizens on their own and when Iraq is no longer a safe haven for terrorists.

Bush is trying to convince skeptical Americans that his strategy for Iraq will work even as the U.S. death toll increases nearly three years since the invasion to oust President Saddam Hussein.

He has faced a barrage of criticism over his handling of Iraq. The week Paul Bremer, the senior diplomat who administered Iraq for a year after Saddam was toppled, said his call for a big expansion of troops there in 2004 was rejected.

In the overall war on terrorism, which the president says includes Iraq as its central front, Bush said: "Like generations before us we have faced setbacks on the path to victory, yet we will fight this war with resolve and without wavering."

A suicide attack inside Iraq's Interior Ministry compound killed 28 people on Monday, which followed one of the bloodiest days in months, when attacks killed 120 people.

In one of the worst weekends for the U.S. military since the invasion, a U.S. helicopter crashed in Iraq, killing all 12 people on board, and five Marines died in the west of the country.

Bush has refused to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, which now number about 153,000 personnel, but says American forces can pull out when Iraqi forces take over security.

More than 2,200 Americans and some 30,000 Iraqis have been killed in the Iraq war.

Hmmm..."we have faced setbacks on the path to victory, yet we will fight this war with resolve and without wavering." That reminds me of folks I used to know up north who'd adopt the "we" reference when talking about the football team--as if watching the game on teevee somehow secured them a spot on the roster.

Then again, it's not the first time chickenhawks like Shrub--and, evidently, his SCOTUS nominee Scalito--gave themselves medals of valor even as they played shrinking violet. Hullabaloo has more:

The only political aspirants among those three groups who failed to meet the test of their generation were the chickenhawks. And our problem today is that they are the ones in charge of the government as we face a national security threat. These unfulfilled men still have something to prove.

And, I suspect because their leadership of the "conservative" movement has infected the new generation, we are seeing much of the same pathology among younger warhawks as well. This is why we hear the shrill war cries of inchoate bloodlust from these quarters every time the terrorists strike. It's a primal scream of inner confusion and self-loathing. These are people whose highest aspirations and deepest longings are wrapped up in their masculinity, and yet they are flaccid failures. They are in a state of arrested development, never having faced their fears, never becoming men, remaining boys...

And so, while they prefer ever more fanciful depictions of Mesopotamia over the truly ugly reality, they likewise continue to obsess over the 1960's...something they constantly accuse their political opponents of.

Historians are going to have a field day with these assclowns.