1115.org

President Bush is trying to pretend that they changed their minds about withdrawing some troops from Iraq because the ground realities changed (in case you’re curious about that plural pronoun, it refers not to Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld but to the generals they all “listen” to):

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Your comment earlier that last spring you believed that troops would be able to come home early next year —

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q — I wonder if you could talk to us about how you came to believe that, and over what period of time, or whether it was a single development because you realized that wasn’t feasible.

THE PRESIDENT: No, no, no, look, Mike, here’s the way it works. I meet with our — or talk to our generals all the time. And the security situation looked like at that point in time that beginning next year, we could reduce our troop presence. That’s what we felt — until the conditions on the ground changed. And when they changed, our generals changed their attitude. And when their attitude changed, my attitude changed.

Ox-crap! It’s not the conditions on the ground that have changed in any meaningful way. What’s changed, if anything, is Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld’s willingness to totally ignore conditions on the ground in formulating decisions about the Iraq war. Until very recently, all decisions seemed to be influenced solely by domestic politics.

As recently as the beginning of July, Rumsfeld’s obedient generals were talking about withdrawing some troops by the end of the year. This was when the reality on the ground was that we did not have enough troops in Iraq to maintain basic law and order in key cities. From an AP report dated July 2:

There is little sign of change in central Ramadi, where street battles are common, or in southern neighborhoods where few American patrols have ventured in months.

How’s that for ignoring conditions on the ground? There were parts of Ramadi where we didn’t even dare to send in patrols, and our generals were not only saying “Yes, boss, we have sufficient troops in Iraq”, they were saying with a straight face that we’ll probably be able to start bringing troops home before the end of the year.