WASHINGTON - Steady condemnation from conservatives for the Iraq Study Group report may be providing some cover to the Bush administration as it completes its own review of strategy in Iraq, apparently with little enthusiasm for the panel's prescription of U.S. troop withdrawal and dialogue with Syria and Iran.
The criticism of the panel, co-chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), has burst forth from the leading institutions of the right: the National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard; conservative talk radio; and scholars at some of Washington's top think tanks.
President Bush has spoken favorably of the panel's work as an opportunity to bring the country together, but he has been noncommittal on its key recommendations. Comments from the hawkish right, meanwhile, have often been an accurate gauge of the beliefs of key figures inside the Bush administration, especially Vice President Cheney.
Many Republican and Democratic lawmakers have embraced the panel's report, but the almost uniformly negative reaction from some of Bush's strongest conservative supporters means the president may have some political flexibility to depart from the group's major recommendations, according to some GOP operatives.
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more at link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16132905/The neocons are on the offensive again, this time to save their war and their theories of how American military power can solve the worlds ills. Although they may believe their theories, I also believe that this is nothing but an attempt to buy Bush a couple years so the neocons can blame whoever the next president is for losing in Iraq. They will talk about how we lost our will to fight and blame the media and the Democrats for another Vietnam style loss. Bush's groups that are looking at strategy changes are going to call for fine tuning the disaster we are in now while saying that victory is right around the corner. The ISG plan will be looked upon as the one plan that called for the most change, yet it too was a mostly stay the course disaster plan.
Things are going to change on the ground, that's for sure as they are going to get worse. Bush can beat his chest about victory all he wants and McCain and Lieberman will be right there to support to him. They will call for more troops but will not be able to find any because they are already committed in Iraq. Of course, they will talk more about the will to win too but they won't talk about the sacrifice we as Americans would have to make to assure "victory". Those sacrifices would be a draft and tax increases to pay for the war. See, the war supporters have it easy now: they have their war with minimal current sacrifice as someone else fights the war the future gets to pay for it. If a draft were instituted to assure "victory", would the American people respond with enthusiam (Yeah send my kid to Iraq!) or would they respond with revulsion? I'm with the latter as the one sure way to make an unpopular war even more unpopular is to start a draft. However, if these war supporters are so committed to victory why don't they have the courage to call for what is necessary to win it? They don't have the courage because all it is is political gamesmanship for the 2008 elections and who will get the blame for losing Iraq.
We are going to leave Iraq sooner or later. It's just a matter of who will be the last American to die for a pack of lies. How we do so will be up to the next president. Unfortunately, more Americans and Iraqis will die so this President can say when he leaves office that he didn't lose the war and his ego will remain intact.
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