It's Official

I know you'll all be shocked by this (via Froomkin):

Eugene Robinson writes in his Washington Post op-ed column: "Here's a surprise: Remember how we were told that if we just waited until the fall, we'd see that George W. Bush's 'surge' was working in Iraq? Well, now it turns out that we shouldn't expect answers in September after all.

"White House spokesman Tony Snow was purposeful on Wednesday in stomping, trampling, tap-dancing upon and otherwise giving a definitive beat-down to any expectations of a serious, fact-based reassessment of Iraq policy in the fall. Never mind that the White House raised those expectations in the first place.

"The September scenario has been a rhetorical mainstay for the administration and its supporters, a major argument for ignoring all the bad news from Iraq and giving Bush's troop escalation a chance to work. Let's wait for Gen. David H. Petraeus, the man who's now running the war, to submit his progress report. At that point, went the White House argument, the 'way forward' would become clear.

"The fog of war seems to have closed back in. 'I have warned from the very beginning about expecting some sort of magical thing to happen in September,' Snow told the White House press corps, whose collective recollection was somewhat different. 'What I'm saying is, in September you'll have an opportunity to have metrics.'"

War without end.

How about this exchange between Helen Thomas and Tony Snow:

"Said Thomas: 'I have one follow-up. . . . Are there any members of the Bush family or this administration in this war?'

"'Yes,' said Snow, 'the president. The president is in the war every day.'

"Thomas said that wasn't her question. She said she meant 'on the front lines.'

"'The president,' Snow said."

You know what's really pathetic? The sonofabitch believes it.