The post surge strategy

Or how you keep the surge going by saying you have a strategy for after the surge when you really don’t:

“Look, the president understands the American people are frustrated,” said a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid upstaging Bush. “We’ve been at this a long time. We’ve sacrificed some of our best and brightest. . . . But they want to see that we have a vision for success that will allow us to gradually downsize our role and reduce our footprint. The president needs to and wants to remind everybody that he shares that frustration.”

Here's the link to the story.

How by any reasonable standards could any person think that Bush understands that the American people have had enough of Iraq when every step that he takes only prolongs the conflict.

And then this:

Bush hopes the net result would be a situation stable enough that the next president -- even a Democrat with an antiwar platform -- would feel confident enough to sustain some form of U.S. mission despite domestic pressure to pull out altogether. But Bush aides said they are acutely aware that every forecast they have made for Iraq over the past four years has proved wildly optimistic.

Then maybe what needs to be planned is a worse case scenario and how to deal with that. Instead of these ridiculous pie in the sky scenarios that never come to pass. This is the reason the American public has said enough with Iraq. Nothing the Bush administration says about Iraq about how things are going ever seems to pan out in Iraq.

This just points out what I just said:

Although it initially envisioned a troop increase lasting six to eight months, the administration lately has anticipated keeping the extra troops in place until next spring and then beginning to pull them back, one brigade at a time.

The Bush administration always goes with the rosy scenario. It will be quick. It will be easy. The vast majority of troops will be home by December. The Iraq oil reserves should pay for most of the war. There has never been a real and honest assessment of what we are up against.

This is especially true as the situation in Iraq has spiraled out of control. Even before the surge was underway administration officials said the surge would last only eight months. But also almost immediately as the surge was building was the view that the surge would have to last much longer than that. There just never seems to be a straight answer from this administration.

Yes, we are told over and over again that Bush wants to draw down the troops but only when the time is right. I figure the time will be right January 21, 2009.