The "Bench Marks" Change

This comes from a story in the Post today.

The Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely involved in the matter. As they prepare an interim report due next week, officials are marshaling alternative evidence of progress to persuade Congress to continue supporting the war.

and this:

"There are things going on that we never could have foreseen," said one official, who noted that the original benchmarks set by Bush six months ago -- and endorsed by the Maliki government -- are not only unachievable in the short term but also irrelevant to changing the conditions in Iraq.

Ah, yes things are going on that they could not have been "foreseen." This should be the motto of the Bush Administration in Iraq. They essential haven't been able to foresee anything. So the bench marks set earlier in the year will not be met. So now the Bush Administration is coming up with another set of bench marks to point to to show we should stay in Iraq.

What this shows is that the Bush line of not having an "open ended commitment in Iraq" is a lie. If the bench marks continually change, if the goals continually change, if the justification for the invasion continually changes, that means are commitment is completely and totally open ended. And the Iraqis know this which is why they will take their sweet old time to meet any of these bench marks.

The article continues with this very sobering assesment:

Even if U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies are able to hold Baghdad and the surrounding provinces, noted the intelligence official, there is a good chance that security will deteriorate elsewhere because there are not enough U.S. troops to spread around. As U.S. troop numbers decrease, he said, it is possible that by sometime next year "we control the middle, the Kurds control the north, and the Iranians control the south."

One of the things talked about is "drawing down" the troops in Iraq. I've read and heard in a couple of places that this will be done. But what really will be happening is the military will not be able to continue to sustain the level of troops it now has in Iraq. It simply doesn't have them. This will be the Bush Administration "troop reduction." A reduction based on the rotation of troops into Iraq not a real reduction of forces.

It just continues to point out the huge mess that the Bush Administration has gotten us into in Iraq. And that they have few if any ideas on how to get us out of it.