Pure Speculation

Is pressure really building on Bush to change course in Iraq?

From Slate:

The New York Times leads with the growing debate within the White House over whether President Bush should announce a plan to start gradually withdrawing troops from Iraq in order to avoid more Republicans from speaking up against the war. Although administration officials were hoping to avoid this kind of talk until the much-anticipated progress report in September, waiting no longer seems to be an option. "Sept. 15 now looks like an end point for debate, not a starting point," one official tells the paper.

Who's debating? Where did they get this information on the "debate"? It appears to me that administration "officials" are trying to influence Cheney Bush. And we know how well that works.

And how about this:

Four more Republican senators have recently declared that they can no longer support Mr. Bush’s strategy, including senior lawmakers who until now had expressed their doubts only privately. As a result, some aides are now telling Mr. Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback, a strategy that he rejected in December as a prescription for defeat when it was proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

First of all, it would almost appear as a great political strategy. Do a "surge" escalating the war dramatically so that a "pullback" position of permanent occupation of Iraq looks like a "shift" in policy. What a joke. This is like one big (pardon my french) circle jerk in which staffers are trying to influence Bush via the media, the media swallowing the story whole making it appear as a "shift", and a continuing occupation of Iraq.

As I've contended many times, the war will continue in earnest as long as American soliders and contractors are in Iraq. Any "redeployment" within the country will be seen as a continued occupation. The war in Iraq will not end during Bush's term until and unless serious Republicans come out against any further occupation. And given the strength of Republican backbones in Congress, they'll continue to make P.R. announcements which look like a "change in policy on Iraq" but which in fact are full of hot air.