"There are jobs Americans aren't doing. ... If you've got a chicken factory, a chicken-plucking factory, or whatever you call them, you know what I'm talking about."

In 1943 and 1944, with factories working overtime to build the ships, tanks and planes needed to fight World War II, manufacturing accounted for four out of 10 jobs in the U.S. That was the peak; manufacturing has been declining ever since. Manufacturing now accounts for one job in 10 in the nonfarm work force.

Over the past 16 years, manufacturing has declined as a percentage of the work force in 48 of the 50 states. Nevada’s percentage stayed the same and only North Dakota saw an increase.

The declines have been particularly painful in the industrial Midwest and rural South, which have been battered by competition from China.  . . .  

A Moody’s analysis found 16 percent of the nation’s 379 metropolitan areas are in recession, reflecting primarily the troubles in manufacturing. There have been heavy job losses in a variety of industries from textiles and apparel to paper and furniture.  . . .

High-tech industries, where the U.S. is still seen as having the edge, include pharmaceuticals, medical devices and airplanes.

But even high-tech industries are facing pressure from imports. The U.S. Business and Industry Council, which represents small- and medium-sized manufacturing companies, found that between 1997 and 2005, 110 of the 114 U.S. industries it studied had lost ground to imports in the U.S. market. That was the case even in such sectors as computers and telecommunications hardware. . . .

Eighty-four percent of Americans in the labor force are employed in service jobs, up from 81 percent in 2000. The sector has added 8.78 million jobs since the beginning of 2000.   . . .

Princeton economist Alan Blinder, who was vice chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Clinton administration, says the number of jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country could reach 40 million over the next 10 to 20 years. That would be one out of every three service sector jobs that could be at risk.   . . .

As he has before, Bush told the story about how his first presidential decision was to pick a rug for the Oval Office, a task he quickly cast to his wife. He told her to make sure the rug reflected optimism "because you can't make decisions unless you're optimistic that the decisions you make will lead to a better tomorrow." 

Later, when he talked about his hope for succeeding in Iraq, Bush said, "Remember the rug?"

Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.  

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.  

No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.  

But evidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq. The officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss the policy shift publicly. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made no public mention of training Iraqi troops on Thursday during a visit to Iraq.  

In a reflection of the need for more U.S. troops, the Pentagon decided earlier this month to increase the length of U.S. Army tours in Iraq from 12 to 15 months. The extension came amid speculation that the U.S. commander there, Army Gen. David Petraeus, will ask that the troop increase be maintained well into 2008.  

U.S. officials don't say that the training formula - championed by Gen. John Abizaid when he was the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and by Gen. George Casey when he was the top U.S. general in Iraq - was doomed from the start. But they said that rising sectarian violence and the inability of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to unite the country changed the conditions. They say they now must establish security while training Iraqi forces because ultimately, "they are our ticket out of Iraq," as one senior Pentagon official put it.

The question now is how long will Republicans stand by this war that has cost over 3,000 lives? Is it worth the $1 trillion dollars that will be added to our national debt? Is it worth undercutting our ability to strike at Iran and North Korea? I would say “yes” to all three questions if there were the slightest chance victory was around the corner. But it is not. If you don’t believe me, ask any general to tell you about the Bush surge. They will roll their eyes. 

Even if you agree with me that this war was worth fighting as long as we believed Saddam Hussein had WMD’s aimed at America, at some point you have to face the facts: the Bush administration was wrong about those weapons, wrong about the nuclear program, wrong about their refusal to quell rioting early, wrong about Bremer’s gutting of the Iraqi army and police force, wrong about refusing to kill or capture al Sadr in 2003, wrong to tell the generals not speak of the coming insurgency, wrong to stubbornly refuse to give generals the troops they needed to win this war, wrong to make the “Mission Accomplished” declaration, wrong for the VP to claim that the insurgency was in its death throes and wrong to push a surge plan that the president’s top generals opposed. 

The list could continue for pages but I will be generous to the White House and leave it at that. 

At some point, GOP senators and congressmen need to understand that this war is no longer a battle between Republican war heroes and Democratic 60s hippie freaks. The lines have now been blurred by Bush’s bungling war strategy. Now we find ourselves in a fight between war heroes and war heroes. Former secretaries of Navy and former Vietnam POWs. Conservative Republicans and protectors of the president. 

That may not be so bad for George W. Bush in the short run, but it is a disaster for Republicans in 2008 and beyond.