In yesterday’s press conference, President Bush trotted out one of his straw man friends —

I understand here in Washington, some people say we’re not at war. I know that. They’re just wrong in my opinion.

At least this straw man seems to have a backstory. Yesterday Bush told a group of (highly selected) journalists:

I ran into a kid the other day who used to work here and he goes to a famous law school, and he said, the problem, Mr. President, is people don’t believe we’re at war. I not only believe we’re at war, I know we’re at war.

Of course, at the moment much of the Republican party is pretending there is no war. And some people say the last thing campaigning Republican politicians needed yesterday was Bush dragging the Iraq debacle back into the limelight.

So why did he do it?

A headline in today’s Boston Globe says “Bush puts optimism aside in his assessment of war,” but the fact is he still says we’re winning. That’s not putting “optimism” aside. Yesterday’s press conference was nothing but an attempt to repackage Bush’s giddy delusions.

From the Boston Globe article, by Rick Klein:

Bush continued to back Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, defended the decision to keep fighting in Iraq, and rejected growing calls from Democrats and some Republicans to set a timetable for US withdrawal.

“My view is the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done,” the president said. “If I did not think our mission in Iraq was vital to America’s security, I’d bring our troops home tomorrow. I met too many wives and husbands who have lost their partners in life, too many children who won’t ever see their mom and dad again.”

Dan Froomkin picks up on this statement.

“Absolutely, we’re winning,” Bush said. “As a matter of fact, my view is the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done.”

With the body counts soaring, the country descending deeper into civil war and the central government consistently unable to assert itself, how can he call this winning?

The answer: It’s becoming increasingly clear that Bush sees the war in Iraq in very simple terms. As he himself said, he believes that the only way to lose is to leave. Therefore anything else is winning — anything else at all.

Even if no progress is being made — even if things are getting worse, rather than better — simply staying is winning.

So we’re winning.

Froomkin was the one who alerted me to Bush’s talk with the selected journalists. Here’s my favorite part — Bush’s explanation of why Iraq is not Vietnam.

What’s happening is I’m not — remember the pictures in the Oval Office, with them sitting over the maps, picking out the targets in Vietnam? That’s not happening in this war. The Commander-in-Chief, through the Secretary of Defense, must empower the military people on the ground, and the embassy, to work — and by the way, these guys are working very closely, which is important — to implement the strategy. And if tactics need to change, change them. Just keep us posted. And that’s what’s happening.

Abizaid, who I think is one of the really great thinkers, John Abizaid — I don’t know if you’ve ever had a chance to talk to him, he’s a smart guy — he came up with this construct: If we leave, they will follow us here. That’s really different from other wars we’ve been in. If we leave, okay, so they suffer in other parts of the world, used to be the old mantra. This one is different. This war is, if they leave, they’re coming after us. As a matter of fact, they’ll be more emboldened to come after us. They will be able to find more recruits to come after us.

Abizaid clearly sees this struggle — he sees the effects of victory in Iraq as having a major impact on other parts of the Middle East. He also sees the reciprocal of that, a defeat — just leaving — the only defeat is leaving, is letting things fall into chaos and letting al Qaeda have a safe haven. And he sees it as a — he sees that as an accelerating effect to creating incredible hostility toward people that are moderate in their view. They may not necessarily be as democrat as they want, but they’re moderate in their view about the future.

The only defeat is leaving. As long as we’re still there, we’re winning. Got that?

And I really like the part about “If we leave, they will follow us here.” I do remember jokes we told back in the day — If we pull out of Vietnam, the Vietnamese navy will attack Los Angeles. Nobody believed that, of course; it was just a way to underline how absurd the war was.

But does anyone really believe “if we leave, they will follow us here”? Why would that be true? We don’t exactly have al Qaeda pinned down over there.

I mean, we weren’t in Iraq on September 11, were we?

Sorry; I couldn’t resist.

Here’s another bit from Bush talking to the selected journalists:

My attitude about our — look, I’m into campaigning out there: People want to know, can you win? That’s what they want to know. I mean, there’s — look, there’s some 25 percent or so that want us to get out, shouldn’t have been out there in the first place — and that’s fine. They’re wrong. But you can understand why they feel that way. They just don’t believe in war, and — at any cost.

Now, if Bush really believes only “25 percent or so” thinks the Iraq invasion was a mistake and wants the U.S. out … well, as I’ve said elsewhere, Bubble Boy is in for a hard fall. The most recent Newsweek poll says 25 percent think we’re making progress; 65 percent say we’re not. The most recent CNN poll says 64 percent oppose the war and Bush’s handling of it. And 56 percent say the invasion was a mistake, according to the most recent USA Today/Gallup poll (all on Pollingreport.com).

As my Ma would say, the boy’s got no more notion of what’s going on than a hill of beans.

I believe when you get attacked and somebody declares war on you, you fight back. And that’s what we’re doing.

Iraq attacked us, when?

Anyway, that’s where my — that’s what I’m thinking about these days. Upbeat about things. Upbeat about the elections. As I said — I’m sharing with you what I said in the press conference — I’m not breaking a lot of news here, but I said, look, I understand the conventional wisdom, it’s over. You’ve got people who are dancing in the end zones and they’re measuring their drapes in their new offices. It’s not over. We’ve got the issues on our side.

I just hope they’re not dancing in the end zones and measuring the drapes at the same time.

And you talk to — admittedly, my focus groups are not broad, but people always say to me, thank you for protecting us.

As he says, the focus groups are not, um, broad.. I think the White House must keep a staff of people who will pretend to be a focus group and thank Bush for protecting them. From time to time, these same people also tell Bush stuff like “some people don’t believe there’s a war.” It’s what keeps him going. Otherwise he gets very moody and yells a lot.

Although many hopes are pinned on James Baker’s yet-to-be-released recommendations for policy changes in Iraq, Sidney Blumenthal writes that Bush is fixin’ to ignore them.

Baker, the ultimate cold-eyed realist and authority figure who field-marshaled the strategy in Florida that secured the presidency for Bush, has publicly suggested in the past three weeks that he will offer policy changes. Since then, Bush has plunged into rhetorical contortions to explain that he is “staying the course,” that he is altering his “tactics” and, finally, that he never said “stay the course.” He has adopted the Groucho Marx doctrine: Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes or, in this case, ears?

Bush is engaged in a shadow politics of fending off Baker that he can’t admit and that require new disingenuous explanations for rejection even before receiving Baker’s report. But will consummate political player Baker permit a dynamic in which he is humiliated and join the ranks of the dismissed and discarded, like “good soldier” Colin Powell? If Baker, taking his cue from Bush’s rebuke, simply closes ranks, what would have been his point, except to highlight his failure at an attempted rescue? By undermining Baker, especially beforehand, Bush sends a signal that he is determined to maintain his counterproductive strategies in Iraq and the Middle East. Yet his tightening coil will trigger further attempts among U.S. allies and Arab governments to disentangle themselves.

There is much speculation about what Baker will recommend, and even if Baker’s recommendations are really more than a pre-election feint to make people think Bush will change his policies. But, he won’t. I said it yesterday, and I’m saying it again now — Bush will not be changing his policies in Iraq.

Blumenthal continues,

On Wednesday, Bush held a press conference that can only be interpreted as a preemptive repudiation of Baker. Of course, other motives underlay the press conference as well. It was an effort to repackage Bush’s unpopular Iraq policy on the eve of the elections and to demonstrate that he is in charge of circumstances that have careened out of control.

In his remarks, Bush digressed at length to give rote explanations that were elementary, irrelevant or misleading. His supposed admissions of error were attempts at deflecting responsibility. Rather than stating the facts that his Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq had forced the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the civil service (by banning those with Baathist Party membership, which included nearly every bureaucrat), he passively said, “We overestimated the capability of the civil service in Iraq to continue to provide essential services to the Iraqi people.” And: “We did not expect the Iraqi army, including the Republican Guard, to melt away in the way that it did in the face of advancing coalition forces.”

In BushWorld, nothing that goes wrong is ever Bush’s fault.

One year ago today we were marking the two thousandth American in uniform lost in Iraq. James Dao wrote in the New York Times (October 26, 2005):

Sgt. Anthony G. Jones, fresh off the plane from Iraq and an impish grin on his face, sauntered unannounced into his wife’s hospital room in Georgia just hours after she had given birth to their second son.

For two joyous weeks in May, Sergeant Jones cooed over their baby and showered attention on his wife. But he also took care of unfinished business, selling his pickup truck to retire a loan, paying off bills, calling on family and friends.

”I want to live this week like it is my last,” he told his wife.

Three weeks later, on June 14, Sergeant Jones was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on his third tour in a war that is not yet three years old. He was 25. …

… as the nation pays grim tribute today to the 2,000 service members killed in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, their collective stories describe the painful stresses and recurring strains that an extended conflict, with all its demands for multiple tours, is placing on families, towns and the military itself as they struggle to console the living while burying the dead.

In the year since, another 810 American soldiers have died; this includes 97 this month.

Update: A sober cartoon.

[Update: Here is the transcript of the press conference, and here is Skippy’s translation.]

President Bush answered some reporters’ questions about Iraq today. I checked the White House web site, and the transcript isn’t posted yet. But Susan Jones of CNS provides a glimpse:

President Bush says he fully understands that if the American people think he doesn’t have a plan for victory in Iraq (as Democrats have been saying), they won’t support the war effort.

So on Wednesday, Bush once again explained the stakes — stressing how victory in Iraq is vital to U.S. national security.

At a White House press conference, the president said America’s goals remain the same – to establish an Iraqi government that can sustain itself, govern itself, and defend itself. But he said the methods of achieving those goals are flexible and depend on “dynamic events.” …

… He said he will send more troops to Iraq if Gen. Casey says he needs them to achieve victory, adding that he has “great faith” in Casey to give the best advice.

So is there a plan? Or is “flexibility” a euphemism for “there is no plan”? So far all we’ve gotten from Bush is that there’s a plan for victory, which is to obtain victory. Exactly how we’re going to do that, however, depends on whatever General Casey says it depends on.

At Huffington Post, Marty Kaplan provides another glimpse:

At his press conference today, President Bush rallied his remaining base — those scattered cult members who can always be counted on to agree with whatever he says. To all other Americans, his message is: It’s my way, or the die-way.

If you missed the broadcast, here’s the gist of it:

I’m the decider.

Except for deciding how many troops we have in Iraq, in which case, General Casey is the decider.

Except for deciding what benchmarks the Iraqis have to meet, in which case, Prime Minister al-Maliki is the decider.

Except for deciding what “getting the job done” in Iraq means, in which case, Muqtada al-Sadr and Osama Bin Laden are the deciders.

Except for deciding if it’s “stay the course,” or “strategy for victory,” in which case Karl is the decider.

I’m looking forward to the Baker-Hamilton report. If it agrees with my strategy for victory and getting the job done, I will read it. I call this attitude “flexibility.”

Earlier today, Simon Jenkins of the UK wrote,

This country has been turned by two of the most powerful and civilised nations on Earth into the most hellish place on Earth. Armies claiming to bring democracy and prosperity have brought bloodshed and a misery worse than under the most ruthless modern dictator. This must be the stupidest paradox in modern history. Neither America nor Britain has the guts to rule Iraq properly, yet they lack the guts to leave.

Jenkins says the “coalition” is getting out, whether they admit it or not.

US and UK policy in Iraq is now entering its retreat phrase. Where there is no hope of victory, the necessity for victory must be asserted ever more strongly. This was the theme of yesterday’s unreal US press conference in Baghdad, identical in substance to one I attended there three years ago. There is talk of staying the course, of sticking by friends and of not cutting and running. Every day some general or diplomat hints at ultimatums, timelines and even failure – as did the British foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, on Monday. But officially denial is all. For retreat to be tolerable it must be called victory.

The US and British are covering their retreat. Operation Together Forward II has been an attempt, now failed, to pacify Baghdad during Ramadan. In Basra, Britain is pursuing Operation Sinbad to win hearts and minds that it contrives constantly to lose. This may be an advance on Kissinger’s bombing of Laos to cover defeat in Vietnam and Reagan’s shelling of the Shouf mountains to cover his 1984 Beirut “redeployment” (two days after he had pledged not to cut and run). But retreat is retreat, even if it is called redeployment. Every exit strategy is unhappy in its own way.

The Bushies lied us into Iraq; now they’re going to try to lie us out of it. The problem is (as I wrote yesterday) I doubt very much the Commander in Chief will allow any significant movement out of Iraq as long as he is president. He will not allow it because he is weak. He is too weak to admit he is wrong; he is too weak to give up his beloved “war president” prop. You can argue — and I have argued, as well — that Iraq was invaded to get votes and aggrandize presidential power. Of course, that is true. But above all, I strongly suspect, Bush is desperately trying to hang on to the last shreds of his much undeserved post-9/11 glory. He’s like a cult leader who would rather kill his followers and himself, by fire or Kool-Aid, rather than give up that glory and return to being a mortal man.

And, of course, those making excuses for the debacle are blaming everybody but Dear and Glorious Leader Bush. For example, Jenkins says, Iraqis — “They are telling the world that the occupation will have failed only through the ingratitude and uselessness of the Iraqis themselves.” This is a theme picked up by war supporter Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute:

It’s been coming for a long time: the idea that fixing Iraq is the Iraqis’ problem, not ours — that we’ve done all we can and now it’s up to them. …

… The implication of these arguments is clear: The United States should prepare to leave Iraq, after which the Iraqis will work out their own troubles — or they won’t. In any event, we can no longer help them. This notion is wrong and morally contemptible, and it endangers American security around the world.

The current crisis in Iraq is no more just an Iraqi problem than it has ever been. The U.S. military destroyed Iraq’s government and all institutions able to keep civil order. It designated itself an “occupying force,” thereby accepting the responsibility to restore and maintain such order.

A strong statement. Then Kagan’s moral courage fails, and he blames the military for the policy:

And yet U.S. Central Command never actually made establishing order and security a priority.

And that is because, oh thou bleeping idiot Mr. Kagan, it is not up to “U.S. Central Command” to establish priorities. That’s the job of the damnfool civilians whose damnfool idea it was to invade Iraq to begin with. And chief among those is “The Decider,” George Bush.

It is the responsibility of the leaders of government, not the military, to understand why war is engaged and what outcome is desired. And most of the time, when nations go to war, military strategy is crafted with that outcome in mind. Leaders of government are supposed to think about what assets of the enemy they want destroyed, and what they want preserved. They’re supposed to decide if the enemy population should be killed, imprisoned, or befriended. There may be political considerations given to what cities or regions are attacked first. These priorities should be communicated clearly to the generals, who are charged with the job of giving the political leaders the outcome they want.

Instead, we had a Commander in Chief who wants more and more power with less and less responsibility. And lo these three years, nearly every complaint about Iraq is met with a speech about how the President “listens to the generals.”

So what our view is, we continue to support the generals in any we can, and in any way they find fitting. And we also understand that based on changing conditions in Baghdad and elsewhere, they may be asking for different things at different times and we’re going to supply them; we’re going to support them fully.

Have you ever noticed that when President Bush is talking about Iraq in the abstract — about victory and glory and all — he’s the proud and courageous and resolute leader. But ask him about specifics, and suddenly, he’s just playing a supporting role.

See also today’s Harold Meyerson column:

The president has fled the field from “stay the course,” signaling not just the unwinnability of his war but the bankruptcy of his political strategy. For as the president and his party grope for an alternative plan of action in Iraq, Karl Rove’s bright line between Republican resolve and Democratic defeatism has become irreversibly fuzzed.

“Stay the course,” after all, was never intended to have a free-standing existence. Republicans invoked it only in dialectical contrast to “cut and run,” their caricature of the Democrats’ preference for a phased withdrawal from Iraq, or for partitioning it into three separate quasi-nations, or for redeploying our troops to neighboring states — or, more simply, of the Democrats’ mounting conviction that our presence in Iraq was growing more pointless each day.

In a strenuous attempt to make lemonade from lemons, George Bush attacked the Democrats for failing to articulate a clear, compelling alternative to his war, though his war created so cosmic a debacle that there were no compelling alternatives.

Meyerson then names several Republicans, explains the many ways they are backing away from George Bush’s War, and concludes — “As Iraq descends into a Hobbesian bloodbath, it’s every man for himself within the Grand Old Party.”

Regarding the “Hobbesian bloodbath” — just read the most recent posts by the two Iraqi bloggers on my blogroll — Riverbend and A Star from Mosul.

Sidney Blumenthal wrote in May that Bush doesn’t take his commanders’ advice as much as he claims to:

Stung by the dissent of the former commanders of the US army in Iraq who have demanded the firing of secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld, Bush reassured the audience that he listens to generals. “I make my mind up based not upon politics or political opinion polls, but based upon what the commanders on the ground tell me is going on”, he said.

Yet currently serving US military commanders have been explicitly telling him for more than two years, and making public their view, that there is no purely military solution in Iraq. For example, General John Abizaid, the US commander, said on 12 April 2004: “There is not a purely U.S. military solution to any of the particular problems that we’re facing here in Iraq today.”

Newsweek reported on 22 May that the US military, in fact, is no longer pursuing a strategy for “victory”. “It is consolidating to several ‘superbases’ in hopes that its continued presence will prevent Iraq from succumbing to full-flown civil war and turning into a failed state. Pentagon strategists admit they have not figured out how to move to superbases, as a way of reducing the pressure – and casualties – inflicted on the U.S. Army, while at the same time remaining embedded with Iraqi police and military units. It is a circle no one has squared. But consolidation plans are moving ahead as a default position, and US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has talked frankly about containing the spillover from Iraq’s chaos in the region.”

Yet Bush continues to declare as his goal (with encouragement from his polling expert on the NSC) the victory that the U.S. military has given up on. And he continues to wave the banner of a military solution against “the enemy”, although this “enemy” consists of a Sunni insurgency whose leadership must eventually be conciliated and brought into a federal Iraqi government ….

In fact, the famous “Strategy for Victory” released by the White House in November 2005 (which was not, in fact, a strategy but a set of goals) discussed political, economic, and security “tracks,” so Bush could have been downplaying military victories in favor of political solutions lo these many months, if he had chosen to do so, and pretended that was the plan all along. Of course, a real leader would have been strong enough to look the American people in the eye and say “from now on we will be pursuing a political rather than a military solution.”

Peter W. Galbraith wrote in the New York Review of Books (March 9, 2006):

Much of the Iraq fiasco can be directly attributed to Bush’s shortcomings as a leader. Having decided to invade Iraq, he failed to make sure there was adequate planning for the postwar period. He never settled bitter policy disputes among his principal aides over how postwar Iraq would be governed; and he allowed competing elements of his administration to pursue diametrically opposed policies at nearly the same time. He used jobs in the Coalition Provisional Authority to reward political loyalists who lacked professional competence, regional expertise, language skills, and, in some cases, common sense. Most serious of all, he conducted his Iraq policy with an arrogance not matched by political will or military power.

Reviewing Paul Bremer’s book My Year in Iraq, Galbraith wrote,

Bremer says that Bush “was as vigorous and decisive in person as he appeared on television.” But in fact he gives an account of a superficial and weak leader. He had lunch with the President before leaving for Baghdad —a meeting joined by the Vice President and the national security team—but no decision seems to have been made on any of the major issues concerning Iraq’s future. Instead, Bremer got a blanket grant of authority that he clearly enjoyed exercising. The President’s directions seem to have been limited to such slogans as “we’re not going to fail” and “pace yourself, Jerry.” In Bremer’s account, the President was seriously interested in one issue: whether the leaders of the government that followed the CPA would publicly thank the United States. But there is no evidence that he cared about the specific questions that counted: Would the new prime minister have a broad base of support? Would he be able to bridge Iraq’s ethnic divisions? What political values should he have? Instead, Bush had only one demand: “It’s important to have someone who’s willing to stand up and thank the American people for their sacrifice in liberating Iraq.” According to Bremer, he came back to this single point three times in the same meeting. Similarly, Ghazi al-Yawar, an obscure Sunni Arab businessman, became Bush’s candidate for president of Iraq’s interim government because, as Bremer reports, Bush had “been favorably impressed with his open thanks to the Coalition.”

This tells us that Bush’s chief priority is his own emotional gratification. And I see no evidence that has changed. So as we go forward and try to figure out what out government is doing, keep that in mind. Whatever policies we adopt, Bush’s emotional gratification will be Job One.

As of now, what’s the plan? Who the hell knows? Today the Washington Post reported that more troops may be sent to Baghdad, but the New York Times reported that there are no plans to send more troops to Baghdad. (And why do I suspect General Casey got a phone call from the White House ordering him to retract the first story until after the midterm elections?)

See also:

“The Next Six Months”

Mark Benjamin, “U.S. generals call for Democratic takeover”

Drew Brown, “Some active-duty troops voice their dissent from U.S. policy in Iraq”

John Dickerson, “President Bush Renames His Iraq Plan”

Christopher Dickey, “A Brother’s Rage”

Tom Engelhardt, “Playing the Numbers Game with Death in Iraq”

Michael Gordon, “Iraqi Realities Undermine the Pentagon’s Predictions”

Ron Hutcheson and Margaret Talev, “Announcement draws skeptical reaction in U.S.”

Mark Tran, “US soldier to voice Iraq conflict opposition“

Richard Holbrooke has some advice for Dear Leader:

Broadly speaking, you have three choices: “Stay the course,” escalate or start to disengage from Iraq while pressing hard for a political settlement. I will argue for the third course, not because it is perfect but because it is the least bad option.

In your radio address last week, you said that “our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging: . . . victory.” You added that the only thing changing “are the tactics. . . . Commanders on the ground are constantly adjusting their approach to stay ahead of the enemy, particularly in Baghdad.” One can only hope that you do not mean those words literally — or believe them. “Stay the course” is not a strategy; it is a slogan, useful in domestic politics but meaningless in the field.

Your real choice comes down to escalation or disengagement. If victory — however defined — is truly your goal, you should have sent more troops long ago. You and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld say that the commanders in Iraq keep telling you they don’t need more troops, but, frankly, even if technically accurate, this is baffling. Plain and simple, there are not, and never have been, enough troops in Iraq to accomplish the mission.

I say “victory” is just a slogan, also, when applied to Iraq. In conventional war, “victory” is what happens when the enemy government unconditionally surrenders. But what is “victory” when there is no government to surrender? The truth is that terrorist and insurgent leaders don’t surrender, and even if they did, their cause will not surrender with them. New leaders will arise, and the war will go on.

Holbrooke continues,

But where would more troops come from? The Pentagon says the all-volunteer Army is stretched to the breaking point; it is now recruiting 42-year-olds and lowering entry standards. Afghanistan also needs more troops. And suppose additional troops do not turn the tide? Does the United States then send still more? Even advocates aren’t sure escalation will produce a turnaround.

Many have commented on the disconnect between Bush’s “Churchillian” rhetoric about Iraq and his half-assed policies in Iraq. Robert Freeman wrote recently that

The lies of Iraq have left a growing, cancerous legacy of doubt, shame, and revulsion in the American psyche. The symptoms can only be suppressed through the contrivance of ever more desperate lies. Witness, for example, the current lie that Iraq is a battle “for the survival of Western Civilization,” juxtaposed with another current lie, that it is a “comma” in the unfolding of the modern Middle East. Which is it? Of course, it is neither but just as surely, it cannot possibly be both. But that is the problem that liars create for themselves when their lies begin to unravel.

The fragility of the Iraq War’s rationale — and its consequent collapse — is revealed in the fact that Bush could ask no sacrifice of the nation to fight it, for if there was any pain to be borne, people might look harder at the justification.

There were many rationalizations for invading Iraq; control of oil and neocon fantasies of global American hegemony among them. But I suspect for Bush the Iraq War was supposed to be the main backdrop of his glorious presidency. He was looking forward to six full years of prancing around on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in his flight suit. The hard fact is that our troops are dying because George W. Bush is too big a weenie to face the reality that war isn’t a backdrop. As long as he can still act out his “war president” fantasies, he’s not going to call for a scene change.

Back to Holbrooke:

The last option is the most difficult for an embattled wartime president: Change your goals, disengage from the civil war already underway, focus maximum effort on seeking a political power-sharing agreement, and try to limit further damage in the region and the world.

That is the only course left to us.

I urge you to lay out realistic goals, redeploy our troops and focus on the search for a political solution. … In recent years, almost any advocate of a change in policy has been accused of wanting to “cut and run.” Such rhetoric works against the bipartisanship that this crisis requires. But if you were to decide to draw down American troops — without a fixed timetable — and seek a political compromise, the responsible leadership of the Democratic Party would surely work with you, especially if the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, recommends significant changes in policy, which you could use as a starting point for rebuilding a bipartisan national consensus.

Bush will not take this advice as long as he has power. He can no more “change the course” than he can fly.

But what about the Baker commission? I think this editorial in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gets it:

The American public needs to be very wary of leaks seeping from the so-called Baker commission on the Iraq war. It is possible, given the timing, that the winks and nudges coming from the commission now represent an effort by White House Republicans to suggest to voters that the Bush administration is considering changes in its Iraq war policy, the GOP’s principal losing card in the upcoming elections. …

… We’ve said the commission could be a good thing if it nudges the nation’s war policy in the right direction, but someone with Mr. Baker’s political savvy is still up to throwing curve balls to the electorate to try to prevent the Republicans from losing one or both houses of Congress next month. He was very much the Republicans’ “go to” guy in August 1992 when then President George H.W. Bush was losing his re-election effort. Mr. Baker was called into the fray again in Florida in 2000 when son George W. Bush was faced with a popular vote nationally in favor of Vice President Al Gore and a sticky vote-count situation in Florida.

Billmon skewered Baker’s commission a couple of days ago. Again, there will be no substantive changes in the “course” in Iraq as long as Bush has anything to say about it. Eugene Robinson writes,

The truth is that “the job,” to the extent that Bush has been able to define it, almost certainly will never get done. The question is how many more American and Iraqi lives will be lost before the president admits it, drops all the bluster and acknowledges what Americans already know: “I made a mistake.”

I’m saying never. His lips will fall off first.

Of course, the act is getting old. Niall Ferguson writes in “America’s Brittle Empire“:

Thursday, the spokesman for the U.S. military command in Iraq confessed that the Army’s latest effort to quell the escalating civil war in central Iraq “has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence” — military-speak for “has totally failed.” A year ago, these admissions would have been headline news. Today, people just shrug. That Iraq is Washington’s new “quagmire” has become conventional wisdom.

The Prince has shown some willingness to change his lines, if not the scenery. Peter Baker writes in today’s Washington Post:

… the White House is cutting and running from “stay the course.” A phrase meant to connote steely resolve instead has become a symbol for being out of touch and rigid in the face of a war that seems to grow worse by the week, Republican strategists say. Democrats have now turned “stay the course” into an attack line in campaign commercials, and the Bush team is busy explaining that “stay the course” does not actually mean stay the course.

Instead, they have been emphasizing in recent weeks how adaptable the president’s Iraq policy actually is. Bush remains steadfast about remaining in Iraq, they say, but constantly shifts tactics and methods in response to an adjusting enemy. “What you have is not ‘stay the course’ but in fact a study in constant motion by the administration,” Snow said yesterday.

Of course, “changing tactics” can mean anything. He’s not changing strategy — one might argue there is no strategy to change — and he hasn’t changed goals, whatever those are.

Bush used “stay the course” until recent weeks when it became clear that it was becoming a political problem. “The characterization of, you know, ‘it’s stay the course’ is about a quarter right,” Bush complained at an Oct. 11 news conference. ” ‘Stay the course’ means keep doing what you’re doing. My attitude is: Don’t do what you’re doing if it’s not working — change. ‘Stay the course’ also means don’t leave before the job is done.”

By last week, it was no longer a quarter right. “Listen, we’ve never been stay the course, George,” he told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. “We have been — we will complete the mission, we will do our job and help achieve the goal, but we’re constantly adjusting the tactics. Constantly.”

Snow said Bush dropped the phrase “because it left the wrong impression about what was going on. And it allowed critics to say, ‘Well, here’s an administration that’s just embarked upon a policy and not looking at what the situation is,’ when, in fact, it’s just the opposite.”

Republican strategists were glad to see him reject the language, if not the policy. “They’re acknowledging that it’s not sending the message they want to send,” said Steve Hinkson, political director at Luntz Research Cos., a GOP public opinion firm. The phrase suggested “burying your head in the sand,” Hinkson said, adding that it was no longer useful signaling determination. “The problem is that as the number of people who agree with remaining resolute dwindles, that sort of language doesn’t strike a chord as much as it once did.” …

In other words, Bush’s act is the same old soft shoe. He’s just changed some of the jokes.

As Mr. Holbrooke says, there’s really only one rational direction for Iraq, and that’s out. And I think everyone but the Bushies knows that. We might disagree exactly how to get out, or how long to take to get out, but there’s no point discussing anything else but “out” now.

See also:

Matthew Yglesias, “The New Plan”

Dilip Hiro, “Baker’s Missing Alternative”

H.D.S. Greenway, “The Limits of American Power“