So, the news from Iraq sure doesn’t sound any better that it was a week ago. The death rate of American’s looks on track to rise for another sequential month since the hand-off of power.

Meanwhile, Bush continues with his rosey lies, or “optimism” as Republican spin doctors prefer to call it. It’s this sort of lying optimism that lay behind Bush’s announcement a few weeks back that they’d be reducing the number of troops stationed abroad in places like Europe. Much was made of how this would make lives easier for Military families, since they’d be less likely to be posted abroad, and would instead remain near their families and friends.

It sounded great, the way he talked about it, and it would be great, during peacetime. We aren’t in peacetime though. The worry for military families isn’t whether they might all have to spend a few years in germany. The worry is whether both mom and dad will be called up from the reserves, or, in many cases, whether, having been called up, they’ll be coming back alive any time soon.

My guess is that after the election, if Bush is elected, he’ll quietly put the rest of the plan into effect and draw on the troop reductions in europe to beef up or relieve the forces in Iraq.