What Are These People Thinking?

Have these people no sense at all, whatsoever? It's okay to do this in private, but why do it in public? It just encourages the enemy and demoralizes the troops. What am I talking about? This, from Reuters via Yahoo! News:

Republicans Criticize Bush 'Mistakes' on Iraq

Sun Sep 19, 1:11 PM ET

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading members of President Bush's Republican Party on Sunday criticized mistakes and "incompetence" in his Iraq policy and called for an urgent ground offensive to retake insurgent sanctuaries....

"The fact is, we're in deep trouble in Iraq ... and I think we're going to have to look at some recalibration of policy," Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

"We made serious mistakes," said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has campaigned at Bush's side this year after patching up a bitter rivalry....

McCain said Bush had been "perhaps not as straight as maybe we'd like to see."...

Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also criticized the administration's handling of Iraq's reconstruction....

Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, speaking on ABC, accused the administration of delaying an offensive out of concern it would hurt Bush's bid to win reelection on Nov. 2.

"The only thing I can figure as to why they're not doing it with a sense of urgency is that they don't want to do it before the election and they want to make it seem like everything is status quo," Biden said....

Biden said disappointment with Bush's policies was bipartisan. "Dick Lugar, Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, John McCain -- we are all on the same page....This has been incompetence so far," he said.

There's useful dissent and there's stupidity. That kind of talk is stupidity, pure and simple. But what do you expect from the preening denizens of the U.S. Senate? After all, John Kerry and John Edwards are members of the club.