Faiti Accompli

Well, we knew it was coming. Doesn't mean I like it. I understand it, but it doesn't make me happy:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
President George W. Bush won a battle over funding the
Iraq war as congressional Democrats on Tuesday abandoned troop withdrawal efforts for now but pledged to fight with new legislation in July.

Senior congressional aides said a $100 billion war funding bill the U.S. Congress is trying to finish this week will not contain timetables for withdrawing most of the 147,000 U.S. troops from Iraq, as anti-war Democrats had hoped.

Toilet water. That's what it sucks.

If that doesn't get you, how about this. The new plan in Iraq being brewed up by the wingnut administration is to ..... wait for it ...... abandon attempts at reconciliation and to train Iraqi troops!

President Bush and his senior military and foreign policy advisers are beginning to discuss a "post-surge" strategy for Iraq that they hope could gain bipartisan political support. The new policy would focus on training and advising Iraqi troops rather than the broader goal of achieving a political reconciliation in Iraq, which senior officials recognize may be unachievable within the time available.

The revamped policy, as outlined by senior administration officials, would be premised on the idea that, as the current surge of U.S. troops succeeds in reducing sectarian violence, America's role will be increasingly to help prepare the Iraqi military to take greater responsibility for securing the country.

Now I know that it's Bush's mission in life to personally drive me insane. And so far, he's done a fairly good job. But how can Iraq be solved without reconciliation, and haven't we been training Iraqi troops for, like, eons? From the time capsule:

AMMAN, Jordan - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Thursday that his country's forces would be able to assume security command by June 2007 — which could allow the United States to start withdrawing its troops.

"I cannot answer on behalf of the U.S. administration but I can tell you that from our side our forces will be ready by June 2007," Maliki told ABC television after meeting President Bush on Thursday in Jordan.

Maliki was replying to a question about whether U.S. troops could start withdrawing at that time.

This is like existing in some kind of Salvador Dali painting! My head is going to explode! This policy is the equivalent of taking a difficult child, giving up on him/her, and simply using (or trying to use) force to keep the kid in the basement.

I'm not even going to get into the details how just how stupid this is. It's so obvious my 2 month old grandchild can figure it out.

This is not a good day.

This is the absolute first time in my life that I could understand there being a military coup. I totally understand a Seven Days In May scenario where the civilian systems are so fucked up that generals feel the need to take over.

Update: I hadn't thought about this, but Josh Marshall's site points out that even if (and it is a big if) Republicans bail on Bush in September, guess who'll get credit for moving Bush and ending the war? This is a big victory for Republican strategists and a huge reinforcement of Dems as wimps.

Update II: Needlenose, a very savy blogger btw, offers the most upbeat assessment of the situation in two posts, here and here. Maybe. Dems are really going to have to hustle in the media to sell this as progress and as holding Bush accountable. Let's see how muscular their response is in the next week or so.