Bush's idea of staying the course is insane on almost all levels. Stay the course on a stagnant economy? Why? Stay the course on global warming? Stupid and a missed economic opportunity! Stay the course on al-Qaeda? Bush STILL doesn't seem to care about catching bin Laden, the man who actually attacked America. Stay the course on Iraq? The course in Iraq is a spiral of violence that is beyond Civil War. Civil War implies two organized sides. Iraq is descending into the chaos of Afghanistan and Somalia, the exact kind of chaos that ENCOURAGES al-Qaeda and destablilizes the entire region.

The latest sign that he Iraq quagmire is an out of control mess that Bush has fumbled about every way he can is the fact that Iraqi academics are being killed at an enormous rate and those who survive are fleeing the nation as fast as they can.

From Salon.com:

Gunmen killed the Shiite dean of Baghdad University's school of administration and economics along with his wife and son on Thursday, four days after the murder of a prominent Sunni academic.

Jassim al-Asadi was driving with his family in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah when unidentified assailants pulled alongside and opened fire, police Lt. Ahmed Ibrahim said.

The shooting follows the killing on Monday of geologist Essam al-Rawi, head of the University Professor's Union and a senior member of the hardline Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which is believed to have links to the anti-Shiite insurgency raging against U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies.

But here is the kicker and the REAL condemnation of Bush's Iraq policy because it shows that all along Bush has been failing to improve the situation in Iraq:

The Education Ministry says at least 154 university professors were murdered in Iraq between April 9, 2003, shortly after the U.S. invasion, and Oct. 3, 2006. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of others have fled to neighboring countries.

And in America we think worrying about tenure and NIH funding is bad!

How can a nation rebuild when it is losing its best and brightest to assassination, murder and a panicked exodus? Why should we stay the Republican course? It has failed miserably!