Digger: not to change the point (well, OK, to change the point), still think that Bush has not started "Operation Cut and Run" after his speach on Wednesday?

My prediction: There are Parlamentary elections in Iraq on Dec. 15. The administration will then start with the mantra that we have achieved (not on the road to, but actually achieved) our goal of democratic government in Iraq. We will then start talking up how many Iraqi troops there are now (that process started on Wednesday), even though testimony from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September said that only 1 Iraqi Division was capable of independent operation. Therefore, we will have met our goals and start a "phased drawdown." Translation -- declare victory and cut and run.

Of course this puts the lie to the whole notion that Iraq is the "central front of the war on terror," since we will essentially be saying that the Iraqis are capable of defending our interests in the most important area of the war on terror -- which they are clearly not. In fact, according to the administration, many of the Iraqis are the terrorists. Either Iraq is really not that important, or Bush is handing care of our national security over to the Iraqis. Either way, I don't trust the present administration to have the balls to actually do either what they say or what they should do -- rather I expect them to cave to Republican pressures regarding getting large amounts of troops out of Iraq before the 2006 election regardless of the consequences.

And you know what, the more that I think about it, the more I think that I actually am not really going to argue with that. I have long been thinking that as bad as the situation in Iraq is, and as pissed off as I am that we started this whole mess in the first place, that we had an obligation to see it through and that the result of cutting out would be worse than staying. Now I am not so sure. Perhaps Bush's cut and run strategy, even if done for weasel-ly political purposes, might be in our best interests after all. Iraq is going into civil war (if it is not already there) regardless of whether we are present to provide convenient targets or not.

I just wish our President actually had the guts to either do what he says or say what he is going to do rather than to lead people to believe one thing, and then to come up with a new definition of what "is" is and say that actually he was being consistant all along. What a weasel.