From the NY Times: Bush’s Strategy for Iraq Risks Confrontations

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 —” By stepping up the American military presence in Iraq, President Bush is not only inviting an epic clash with the Democrats who run Capitol Hill. He is ignoring the results of the November elections, rejecting the central thrust of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and flouting the advice of some of his own generals, as well as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq.

The obvious…

In so doing, Mr. Bush is taking a calculated gamble that no matter how much hue and cry his new strategy may provoke, in the end the American people will give him more time to turn around the war in Iraq and Congress will not have the political nerve to thwart him by cutting off money for the war.

Don’t you just hate it when the truth smacks you in the face. Our leaders have no courage, our king has no clothes. Still, we must pray and witness.

The plan, outlined by the president in stark, simple tones in a 20-minute speech from the White House library, is vintage George Bush —” in the eyes of admirers, resolute and principled; in the eyes of critics, bull-headed, even delusional, about the prospects for success in Iraq. It is the latest evidence that the president is convinced that he is right and that history will vindicate him, even if that vindication comes long after he is gone from the Oval Office…

Now where was I? Step 1, Put the steak through the meat grinder. Step 2, Re-create the cow. Thank you Dr. Frankenstein*.

—It’s more than a risk, it’s a riverboat gamble,— said Leon E. Panetta, a Democratic member of the Iraq Study Group and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. —There’s no question that under our system he’s going to be able to deploy these troops without Congress being able to stop him. But he’s going to face so many battles over these next few months, on funding for the war, on every decision he makes, that he’s basically taking the nation into another nightmare of conflict over a war that no one sees any end to.—

And whose consequences we will live with well into the future.

I think the NY Times is stretching the analysis angle. I know that they’ve got to make it fit the format, but perhaps they should add a new section – pointing out the obvious.

*Stay tuned for the movie. Gene Wilder as George Bush, Marty Feldman as Ey-gor, I mean the Vice-president, and Cloris Leachman as Frau Rice.