The NYT ran a major scoop this morning, explaining that White House officials are starting to see the anti-war writing on the wall, which is leading to considerably debate within the administration about whether Bush can begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the war. Much of the Bush gang reportedly hoped to push this off until after the Sept. 15 status report, but no longer see that as feasible.
A few hours later, Tony Snow denied the whole thing.
President Bush is not contemplating withdrawing forces from Iraq now despite an erosion of support among Republicans for his war policy, the White House said Monday. […]
“There is no debate right now on withdrawing forces right now from Iraq,” Snow said.
“The president has said many times that as conditions require and merit that there will be in fact withdrawals and also pulling back from areas of Baghdad and so on,” the press secretary said. “But the idea of trying to make a political judgment rather than a military judgment about how to have forces in the field is simply not true.”
There are a couple of interesting angles to this. First, was the NYT report just plain wrong? I seriously doubt it. As I suggested earlier, I suspect some staffer(s) dished the Times in the hopes of spurring a change in policy — a front-page report in the NYT can shake things up a bit.
Second, Snow dismissed the notion of making “a political judgment,” insisting that a “military judgment” is key. Perhaps that’s why National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was dispatched to the Hill recently to tell lawmakers that Bush’s “surge” may fail. As Bob Novak tells it, “Some senators were left with the impression the White House still does not recognize the scope of the Iraq dilemma. Worse yet, they see Bush running out the clock until April, when a depleted U.S. military will be blamed for the fiasco.”
One more thing. Snow once again preached the virtue of patience.
“You are not going to expect all the benchmarks to be met at the beginning of something,” Snow said. “You are hoping that you are going to be able to see progress in terms of meeting benchmarks from that beginning stage to what you see in two months.”
Let’s contrast that with what we were told earlier this year.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says results of boosting the number of U.S. troops in Iraq by some 21,500 will be known “fairly quickly” and the effort to quell violence there has a reasonable prospect of success if the Iraqis fulfill a variety of existing commitments.
Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee January 12 the first of five new U.S. brigades will arrive in Iraq in mid-January, and U.S.-Iraqi operations to stabilize Iraqi neighborhoods systematically will begin seriously “around the first week of February.”
Remember those words — “fairly quickly” — every time war supporters tell us the surge needs more time to work.