Endgame Ahead (Dave Broder Does the Apocalypse)

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/30/AR2007053002021.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email


Endgame Ahead

By David S. Broder
Thursday, May 31, 2007; A19



While the rest of us enjoyed our holiday, 10 more Americans were killed in Iraq on Memorial Day -- adding to the human toll of that accursed war....But the end is coming into view -- not soon enough to spare every precious life, but sooner than President Bush and Vice President Cheney may wish. The dynamic in Congress has been set in motion that will bring this war to an end -- or at least reduce the scale of American involvement and redefine the mission of U.S. troops.

......

But just below the surface, the GOP ground is beginning to shift. Few if any Republicans want to go into the election with 150,000 American troops still under attack in Iraq. Mitch McConnell, the supremely realistic Senate Republican leader, told reporters that "the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president to lead it."

Bush has hinted that he is taking a fresh look at the suggestion from the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group that U.S. troops be reduced in number and redeployed to concentrate on training Iraqis and fighting al-Qaeda. He was cool to that report when it was issued in December, but now he has moved on another of the Baker-Hamilton recommendations by having his ambassador in Baghdad open talks on the future of Iraq with the Iranian ambassador.....Meanwhile, a significant movement is developing in the Senate to make Baker-Hamilton's recommendations the official policy of the government. A resolution to that effect, co-sponsored by Democrat Ken Salazar of Colorado and Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, will be introduced in early June, with at least six other senators -- three from each party -- endorsing it.

These senators are centrists -- the kind who can exert leverage on their colleagues. But the man who can do the most to catalyze the shift among Republicans is Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the widely respected former chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Colleagues say that Warner is torn between his loyalty to the president and his deep anxiety about events in Iraq. And as a former Navy secretary, he has an acute awareness of the price America's fighting men and women are paying for the policy mistakes there.

If Warner shifts, many other Republican senators will move with him, and the policy will change. I think that time is coming soon.

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[blm]

1. Warner promised Kerry last summer that he would change course when

he felt that Iraq was truly in a civil war - in the fall he went to Iraq and discovered that it WAS in civil war, but WH talked him into waiting till after election - then the Dems took over.

I have every reason to believe that Warner WILL be leading the GOPs on the move to a withdrawal timetable, but the political cover will be coming from ALL directions. I expect both Kerry and Feingold to be pushed aside even while others usurp much of their original legislative points - a LONG YEAR LATER.

[mike_c]

2. I think it is a damned shame that congressional democrats...

...will likely allow the GOP to determine the future direction of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq.

[Rydz777]

3. It's so cynical it boils the blood. Yes, we' may leave, but let's wait

'til the summer is over and then talk about it some more. Maybe something will turn up while we are on vacation.

Nothing is going to turn up, and nothing is going to change except the number of those killed and maimed will increase. It's going to be no easier to make an honest decision in September than it is in June. Out NOW.