Pentagon Gives Up; Hands War Over to Bush (McClatchy)

[kpete]

Pentagon Gives Up; Hands War Over to Bush
by The Angry Rakkasan
Wed Aug 29, 2007 at 10:02:29 PM PDT


Mark it down. August 29, 2007. That’s the day the Pentagon announced it was done being responsible for Mr. Bush’s waste of lives, time, and money in Iraq. Tonight, the Defense Department has essentially told the President, "Thanks for the war, George, but it’s all you from here on out, buddy."

They’re pulling out the rug from beneath Petraeus before he’s even made his pitch. This is the Defense Department saying that while Commander Guy may have found one guy to hold the line on the surge, one guy is all he has.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/30/01221/5753

Pentagon won't make surge recommendation to Bush
By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — In a sign that top commanders are divided over what course to pursue in Iraq, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it won't make a single, unified recommendation to President Bush during next month's strategy assessment, but instead will allow top commanders to make individual presentations.

"Consensus is not the goal of the process," Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. "If there are differences, the president will hear them."

Military analysts called the move unusual for an institution that ordinarily does not air its differences in public, especially while its troops are deployed in combat.

....................

White said it suggests that the military commanders want to be able to distance themselves from Iraq strategy by making it clear that whatever course is followed is the president's decision, not what commanders agreed on.

more at:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/19356.html

[opihimoimoi]

1. Poor widdle Bushie...all alone is he....even his tin soldiers are jumping ship...

[Gloria]

2. I hope this holds when Chimpy decides to bomb iran....

[madrchsod]

3. the commander in chief has lost the military

another first for bush and another blow to our republic.

[underpants]

4. TPM (via Froomkin) nails it

Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall writes that Bush's "entire legacy as president is bound up in Iraq. Which is another way of saying that his legacy is pretty clearly an irrecoverable shambles. That is why, as the folly of the enterprise becomes more clear, he must continually puff it up into more and more melodramatic and world-historical dimensions. A century long ideological struggle and the like. For the president a one in a thousand shot at some better outcome is well worth it, no matter what the cost. Because at least that's a one in a thousand shot at not ending his presidency with the crushing verdict history now has in store. It's also worth just letting things keep on going as they are forever because . . . something better might turn up. Going double or nothing by expanding the war into Iran might be worth it too for the same reason. For him, how can it get worse?"


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html?hpid=topnews