...going back now some four years, who can point to even a single Bush administration decision in Iraq, either strategic or tactical, that didn't turn out to be either a bad idea or a complete disaster? Anything? One good call?-Josh Marshall, on tomorrow night's scheduled speech by President Bush in which he is expected to announce that he will escalate the Iraq War by adding about 25,000 additional troops.
When the President goes before the people on Wednesday, he is basically saying, "trust me."
Marshall is right. Nothing the Bush team has done has gone well in Iraq. And this troop surge won't help matters. Realistically, if the President's desire is to get things under control over there, he would need to send in 100,000 additional troops.
Those of us who were against Bush's war back in 2002 argued that, if he was going to go in, he wasn't committing enough manpower to keep the peace. Today, four years and 3,000 lives later, Mr. Bush is just now coming to the realization that he didn't do what really needed to be done.
And with that realization he is going to go on television tomorrow night and offer to fix it with a band-aid. On the cheap.
At this point I would prefer that we begin pulling out of Iraq. We should have never been there to begin with. But that's not going to happen. So we ought to focus on getting it right. But with this incompetent administration calling the shots I doubt that will happen either.
