Together in colossal denial

About 99.99 percent of the world's inhabitants who have access to a television set know that George W. Bush dwells in a sealed bubble of denial. But the bubble must have a back door, because wife Laura got in there with her husband this morning. Asked by MSNBC's Nora O'Donnell what she thought about poll results that show 80% of Americans disapprove of George's handling of Iraq, the First Lady blamed the media. To quote Her Ladyship: “I do know that there are a lot of good things that are happening that aren’t covered. And I think that the drum beat in the country from the media, from the only way people know what is happening…is discouraging.”

So which drumbeat is she listening to. Maybe it's Karl Rove up in the White House attic with a set of bongos. The drums of reality come through like this:

As of today, 3,161 US troops have been killed in civil war-torn Iraq. Tens of thousands - or much more likely hundreds of thousands - of Iraqis have been killed. 100,000 Iraqis are fleeing their country every month (UN estimate), with 1.8 million of them now living in other Arab countries. (700,000 are in Syria; 500,000 are in now-overwhelmed Jordan.) About two million Iraqis are displaced in their own land. And while the Iraq occupation continues to erode the US military in obvious ways, a volcanic Afghanistan is bubbling toward what will probably be a massive spring offensive by the already resurgent Taleban. (Yes indeed, that is the country just beyond Iran that saw The Decider pull out US troops in 2003 in order to create his Iraq debacle - the same Afghanistan from which emanates at this time no less than 90% of the world's heroin.)

Wake up, bubble people, and redeem some of your legacy. Come out and work with Congress to set an Iraq withdrawal timeline.