Hagel is Keenly Aware of the Obvious

Over atDaily Kos we get a summary of Chuck Hagel's (R-Neb) remarks to a group of American Legion. It from a subscription only link so I'm cutting and pasting from Kos who did the same from the source.

Hagel sounds alarm over Iraq

BY JAKE THOMPSON
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. - More than 200 Nebraska American Legion members, who have seen war and conflict themselves, fell quiet here Saturday as Sen. Chuck Hagel bluntly explained why he believes that the United States is losing the war in Iraq.

Sen. Chuck Hagel addresses more than 200 Nebraska American Legion members in Grand Island on Saturday.

It took 20 minutes, but it boiled down to this:

The Bush team sent in too few troops to fight the war leading to today's chaos and rising deaths of Americans and Iraqis. Terrorists are "pouring in" to Iraq.

Basic living standards are worse than a year ago in Iraq. Civil war is perilously close to erupting there. Allies aren't helping much. The American public is losing its trust in President Bush's handling of the conflict.

And Hagel's deep fear is that it will all plunge into another Vietnam debacle, prompting Congress to force another abrupt pullout as it did in 1975.

"What we don't want to happen is for this to end up another Vietnam," Hagel told the legionnaires, "because the consequences would be catastrophic."

It would be far worse than Vietnam, says Hagel, a twice-wounded veteran of that conflict, which killed 58,000 Americans.

Go to Kos for the whole article.

I got to these comments from a post by Matt Y. You should go read what Matt has to say. He's lost his patience with this sort of thing from the moderate Rs. Hagel knows very well that Bush won't do anything in response to these "rhetorical warning shots" so what's does Hagel plan to do about it.