As the lemmings march into the sea, you can hear their Republican leaders noisily proclaiming a victory parade and accusing all doubters of wanting to “cut and run.”

The Iraq war has been one blunder after another since before it even began. The President’s newest revision of reasons for being there, “When the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down,” smashes to smithereens his continual claim that Iraq is the center of the global war on terror. As if we expect the poorly equipped, poorly motivated, allegiance-divided, relatively inept Iraqi security forces to lead the war on terror!

Republicans do or say anything to avoid responsibility for their actions. The war is just the most glaring example. They are screwing up major areas of American life: Their attitude of denial toward global warming, their messing up health care and the future of Social Security and Medicare with their insistence on privatization schemes, their continuation of money corruption in politics by opposing public campaign financing, their subsidizing inequality at the expense of equal opportunity, their piling up deficit debt for our children and grandchildren, their trampling of rights in the name of security.

They spent five years developing a “comprehensive” energy policy so obsolete that, within six months, the President had to reverse rhetoric and warn about “oil addiction.”

As for rosy statistics about our economy, remember: If you’re in a room along with Bill Gates, the average worth of persons in the room is $25 billion; but that doesn’t make you a multi-billionaire.

The last, great hope of Republicans is that they can find enough lemmings to stay the course without thinking about where we’re going.

Ron Yezzi

Mankato