I've tried, believe me I have. I've stepped back, taken a second look and attempted to give the President of the United States a second chance to prove he's not nuts.

Won't work. Can't work. There's just too much evidence out there to show George W. Bush is out of his freaking mind.

A statement last week during an appearance before the Associated General Contractors of America iced it as Bush tried for the umpteenth time to justify his escalation of his war in Iraq along with his continued refusal to accept any timetable for withdrawal:

Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that's what we're trying to achieve.

Yep. That's what the man said. The quote above comes off the official transcript [1] on the White House web site.  He said "success is not, no violence" and followed that up with "there are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives."

Listen closely to what the man said. Iraq can never be a safe place to live because we aren't safe in our own country.

But we have learned to live with it.

Yet in a sad, insane way, Bush gave opponents of the war all they reasons they need to pull out of Iraq.

He admits Iraq will never be safe, that our goal now is to make it "relatively safe" and reach a level of acceptable violence based on the American model.

Hell, we're already there.

Murderers kill 16,000 to 17,000 people in this country every year - an average of 43 to 46 people a day.  So far this year, Iraqis are dying at the rate of 20-30 a day.

Mission accomplished: An "acceptable" level of violence is achieved. Bring the troops home. Baghdad is now just like East St. Louis. We've brought all the fear and dread of violent American life to a new country. Democracy is served.

This, of course, is a crazy conclusion based on inaccurate statistics. The per capita death rate from violence in Iraq is far higher. We have more than 300 million Americans to serve as fodder for violent death. They have, give or take a few million refugees who have fled the country, about 27 million. Our per capita death rate is one-tenth of theirs.

But since Bush used inaccurate intelligence to justify his invasion of Iraq, why can't we use inaccurate statistics to bolster a case for withdrawal. Maybe the best way to deal with a crazy man is to offer even crazier solutions.

After all, what is more crazy than the President of the United States telling the American people that we live in violent times in a violent place and we might as well just learn to live with it.

If what Bush says is true, then the efforts of terrorists are redundant. According to the President, we're doing a damn good job of killing each other off our own and that's OK because we must accept "a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives."

God, I hope he's wrong.

Yet, in this crazy world, even a madman can be a prophet.