Bush continues to think that he can create his own reality.

There's always been something faintly delusional about the Bush White House and it's insistence that it creates reality whilst the rest of us watch in wonder. This mindset was best illustrated by the extraordinary words of an unnamed Bush aide to the writer Ron Suskind:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

What's extraordinary, after the disaster of the Iraqi debacle, is that this same mindset has not really altered. Bush and Cheney continue to insist that reality is what they state it to be rather than acknowledge that it is based on any given set of facts that we can all agree upon.

What else could explain Bush and Cheney's attempts over the weekend to state that their proposed troop increase in Iraq is the only alternative on the table and that no-one has suggested any other possible course of action?

Mr Bush and Mr Cheney challenged Democrats to come up with a better way: "To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," Mr Bush said, while his Vice-President, predictably, was more trenchant. "They have absolutely nothing to offer in its place," Mr Cheney told the conservative Fox News. "I have yet to hear a coherent policy from the Democratic side." And, he added: "If the United States doesn't have the stomach to finish the task in Iraq, we put at risk what we've done" - confirming the belief of al-Qa'ida that the US could be driven from the Middle East.

The Baker Report offered a very different way out of the morass that is Iraq, but the Bush regime have decided to ignore it. However, it is one thing to reject an alternative that you find unsavoury, it is an altogether more startling proposition when you pretend that it never existed and argue such a ludicrous position publicly.

And this is exactly what Bush and Cheney have done this weekend. They are challenging the Democrats to come up with an alternative as if no previous alternative has ever been suggested.

This is truly delusional. That both the President and Vice President can state such a palpably false proposition on national television, without fear of being laughed out of the studio, says a lot about the state of political debate in the US. I note that Cheney's comments were made to the ever supportive Fox News.

However, there are signs that this delusional viewpoint is no longer sufficing as a rallying point for Republicans, especially not for Republicans facing re-election in 2008.

Though the White House insists that it alone charts the conduct of the war, the administration is deeply worried how non-binding resolutions opposing the troop build-up, likely to be voted upon in both Senate and House of Representatives in the next few weeks, could erode its authority and credibility.

Majority Democrats are already working on texts designed to attract maximum Republican support. The Senate vote will be especially telling, since Democrats need to find 10 votes among their opponents to gather the 60 needed to defeat the filibuster promised by the minority leader Mitch McConnell, a loyal backer of the President. If they succeed, it will be seen as further proof that Mr Bush has lost control of the Capitol Hill wing of his party, as Republican congressmen and senators facing re-election in 2008 run for cover from a war that sent the party to defeat in November's mid-term vote. "Everybody is scared spitless," John Thune, the South Dakota Republican, told The New York Times.

The Bush White House appears to me to be on the point of imploding, as Bush reveals that he has no reverse gear and the Republicans decide that they don't like where he is leading them.

Indeed, Bush emphasised that he will go ahead regardless of what Congress attempt to do to stop him.

"In this situation, I do, yeah," Bush said. "I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward."

This is a President who has always argued that there are no limitations on his power. Indeed, he violated FISA when there was no need to do so expressly to make this point.

Now, with his own supporters beginning to question the route that he has charted, Bush and Cheney have both started to define opponents according to their own reality:

"I'm not going to change my principles," Bush said. "I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to try to be popular and change principles to do so."

"You cannot simply stick your finger up in the wind and say, 'Gee, public opinion's against, we better quit,' " Cheney agreed. That would "validate the al-Qaeda view of the world," he added.

You read that right. Republicans who do not agree with the new plan to send 21,500 American troops to Iraq are validating "the al-Qaeda view of the world".

You see, reality is what they state it to be. And, within their warped view of reality, you are still either with them or you are with the terrorists.

Any administration built upon such delusion deserves to implode, and there is every sign that this one is about to do so.

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Q: How do you explain that the president and his advisors seem not to understand the real nature of the conflict ?

F.F: Despite the results of last elections and the critiques targeting this administration, there is an incapacity to recognise reality as it is.

tag: Iraq, Bush, Iraq war study group, James A Baker, Republicans, Cheney, surge and accelerate, Iraq war,