General Petraeus' report

I've said it before and I'll say it again, now that General Petraeus has said what we all knew he would say (essentially, the surge is working, and they need more time): The Bush administration's plan for Iraq is to pass off this botched war to the next president, so that they can avoid the stain of failure.

Their plan so far is going brilliantly. When the Iraq Study Group report recommended withdrawing troops from Iraq, they did just the opposite. They devised a plan that would allow them to kick the ball further down the field, and put off taking any responsibility for what they've created. They figured out how to "stay the course", without actually saying they were staying the course. They came up with a new slogan, "the surge". In short, they increased troops, in order to delay talk of withdrawal for 9 months.

And now they'll delay for another 9 months, as they decrease the very troops they increased, which will bring everything back to where it was when the troop surge began, and they will have bought themselves some more time. By then, next spring, we'll be in the heat of the presidential campaign and upcoming Congressional elections, and neither party will want to take any big risks. Bush will leave office with his war still in limbo, with the next president stuck cleaning up and taking responsiblity for his catastraphic mess in the Middle East.

In terms of his legacy, this may in fact be the best option President Bush has left. In terms of the future of our country, and the world, however, he is simply sugarcoating disaster for the sake of his own ego. The question is, are the American people, and the Congress, and the press going to continue going along with this charade for another year-and-a-half? Or, are they finally, truly fed up with this web of lies? I, for one, see only two reasonable paths left for Congress to take: One is to recognize that an ongoing U.S. military presence in Iraq is not the solution to the problems there, shift priorities big-time, start focusing on diplomacy and political reconciliation, and cut off funding for this immoral war. The other is to impeach those who led us into it.