On Dumbfuck's speech in GA:
It was a bold attempt by Bush to rebut the widely-reported story that he stopped listening to his commanders -- and in fact, reassigned some -- when they stopped telling him what he wanted to hear.
But Bush's new story lacks a certain important quality: Believability.
Previous reporting -- see, for instance, Michael Abramowitz, Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks in The Washington Post on Wednesday -- has made it abundantly clear that adding U.S. troops was not an idea that emerged from the American commanders -- nor, for that matter, from the Iraqis.
He quotes Brzenski on the Way Forward:
Carter administration national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski outlines five flaws in Bush's plan, in a Washington Post op-ed. Among them:
"The decision to escalate the level of the U.S. military involvement while imposing 'benchmarks' on the 'sovereign' Iraqi regime, and to emphasize the external threat posed by Syria and Iran, leaves the administration with two options once it becomes clear -- as it almost certainly will -- that the benchmarks are not being met. One option is to adopt the policy of 'blame and run': i.e., to withdraw because the Iraqi government failed to deliver. That would not provide a remedy for the dubious 'falling dominoes' scenario, which the president so often has outlined as the inevitable, horrific consequence of U.S. withdrawal. The other alternative, perhaps already lurking in the back of Bush's mind, is to widen the conflict by taking military action against Syria or Iran. It is a safe bet that some of the neocons around the president and outside the White House will be pushing for that. Others, such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman, may also favor it."
His colum/blog/whatever is always worth reading.
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