Credit where credit is not due

November 28, 2005

The president has an annoying habit of taking credit for ideas that he initially opposed, but if Bush really wants praise for a Dem’s withdrawal plan, he’ll have to hope no one is paying any attention to reality.

On Saturday, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post in which he became the latest in a series of lawmakers to call for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, arguing in part that the current troop deployments are unsustainable. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) rejected Biden’s arguments out of hand on Meet the Press yesterday.

Apparently, Warner was off-message. Around the same time the Virginia senator was denouncing Biden’s approach as misguided, the White House was praising it. In fact, as far as the Bush gang is concerned, this was their idea in the first place. Scott McClellan said:

“There is a strong consensus building in Washington in favor of President Bush’s strategy for victory in Iraq. As the Iraqi security forces gain strength and experience, we can lessen our troop presence in the country without losing our capability to effectively defeat the terrorists. Today, Sen. Biden described a plan remarkably similar to the Administration’s plan to fight and win the war on terror.”

Yes, at the White House, opposition to a withdrawal plan is so last week. Sure, just seven days ago, Dick Cheney said that “a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a victory for the terrorists, an invitation to further violence against free nations, and a terrible blow to the future security of the United States of America,” but that was then. Now, get ready for a debate over the meaning of the word “precipitous,” because the White House is warming up to a withdrawal plan after all.

Even as debate over the Iraq war continues to rage, signs are emerging of a convergence of opinion on how the Bush administration might begin to exit the conflict.

In a departure from previous statements, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week that the training of Iraqi soldiers had advanced so far that the current number of U.S. troops in the country probably would not be needed much longer.

President Bush will give a major speech Wednesday at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., in which aides say he is expected to herald the improved readiness of Iraqi troops, which he has identified as the key condition for pulling out U.S. forces.

Watch for this “we were for withdrawal all along” talking point to quickly make the rounds among Bush staffers and their allies. Also watch to see if anyone actually buys this nonsense.

Cynical manipulations aside, it’s encouraging to see that they’re finally considering an exit strategy.

  • Kathleen Parker’s op-ed in my Sunday paper took shots at the Repub congress for not having the courage of their convictions to stay the course.

    I really wonder how they will all accomplish this flip-flop. So much energy has been invested in “stay the course” and denouncing anyone even suggesting a phased withdrawal as a traitor. Now it becomes simply Bush’s old “as the Iraqi’s stand up, we will stand down”.

  • Bush lied us into this war and now he’s lying us out of it. Probably not out of it though, just enough to make people think it’s going to happen.

  • Yes, Dale. We’ll pull out maybe ten or twenty thousand troops, as far away as Kuwait, and call that good. We didn’t build those 14 enormous military bases, and the largest embassy iin the world, just to fatten Halliburton’s piggy banks. Cheney and his creepy friends have plans, egomaniacal and highly profitable plans.

  • The Bush Administration will handle it like they do when they’re pressured to do anything. Delay, stall, browbeat, and finally screw it up badly. They were opposed to the Department of Homeland Security, and then adopted it when it looked like Congress wanted it anyway. And as shown by the Katrina aftermath, it’s a bloated political machine staffed by the criminally incompetent.

    I wish they were serious about this and it isn’t some cynical political ploy. But I have a feeling this will be as big a costly debacle as the Iraqi occupation is now.

  • On Meat the Press John Warner, who is my senator (I disavow George Allen) said that we could not put more troops in Iraq to man a clear and hold strategy because it would seem like an OCCUPATION of Iraq.

    And since when did 138,000 to 158,000 troops not seem like an Occupation?

    We can’t put enough troops in to do the job. We can’t pull out the troops we have in or the terrorists win. So we leave our soldiers and marines in there to die repeatedly taking the same ground.

    This is our policy????

    I still say that W is not going to cut and run until Saddam is dead.

  • Condi indicated last week that we would be pulling 3 battalions back withing the next 6 months. Of course, she indicated that they will be “coming back” to Kuwait.

    Kuwait apparently will be the staging area for our next “Freedom is on the March” initiative.

  • Ah yes, back in 1970, Nixon announced “Vietnamization,” saying that the ARVN was able to stand against the VC and the North Vietnamese Army, so America would be able to withdraw. Of course, six months later in Operation Lamson-719, the incursion into Laos, the ARVN got their ass whipped and the US Army lost more helicopters than any other operation as they continued the “drive to victory.” Then in May 1972 the North Vietnamese Army came this close >

  • Old Fumble-Fingers stikes again – finishing what I said:

    In May 1972, the North Vietnamese nearly nearly whipped the ARVN – only massive American bombing and the mining of Haiphong saved them. That fall, Nixon ordered the B-52s against Hanoi as the last gasp of “peace with honor.”

    In four years of looking for “peace with honor,” Nixon killed more Americans there than in the 8 years previous. And in 1975, the “decent interval” between American withdrawal and Vietnamese victory came to an end.

    I’ll be as happy as anyone when the last American is out of the line of fire in a war more unworthy of their sacrifice than the one I fought in, but we cannot let these pinstriped pissants get away with it. They’re doing it to save their asses next November. They need to pay. Finally, these draft-dodging warhawks need to be “bloodied.”

  • Bush is fighting to con public into believing that he did not adopt Biden’s plan, but rather that Biden adopted Bush’s plan. White House puts out talking points: “Setting the Record Straight: Sen. Biden Adopts Key Portions of Administration’s Plan for Victory in Iraq”

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051126-1.html

    So, Bush steals a democrat’s troop withdrawal plans after Cheney calls them cowards and traitors for suggesting withdrawal.
    http://www.patriotdaily.com/

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