At yesterday's news conference, he laid down the gauntlet: We are staying in Iraq as long as necessary to salvage his ego:
The debate over sending more U.S. troops to Iraq intensified yesterday as President Bush signaled that he will listen but not necessarily defer to balky military officers, while Gen. John P. Abizaid, his top Middle East commander and a leading skeptic of a so-called surge, announced his retirement.
At an end-of-the-year news conference, Bush said he agrees with generals "that there's got to be a specific mission that can be accomplished" before he decides to dispatch an additional 15,000 to 30,000 troops to the war zone. But he declined to repeat his usual formulation that he will heed his commanders on the ground when it comes to troop levels.
Bush sought to use the 52-minute session, held in the ornate Indian Treaty Room in a building adjacent to the White House, to sum up what he called "a difficult year for our troops and the Iraqi people" and reassure the American public that "we enter this new year clear-eyed about the challenges in Iraq." Asked about his comment to The Washington Post this week that the United States is neither winning nor losing the war, Bush pivoted forward. "Victory in Iraq is achievable," he said.
The tension between the White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the proposed troop increase has come to dominate the administration's post-election search for a new strategy in Iraq. The uniformed leadership has opposed sending additional forces without a clear mission, seeing the idea as ill-formed and driven by a desire in the White House to do something different even without a defined purpose.
[snip]
The internal struggle over troop levels in Iraq has exposed a schism between civilian and military leadership 45 months into a war that, at the moment, has no end in sight. Testifying before a Senate committee Nov. 15, Abizaid bluntly rejected the surge option, saying: "I do not believe that more American troops right now is the solution to the problem. I believe that the troop levels need to stay where they are." Other generals have been equally resistant in public and private comments.
Bush has traditionally paid public deference to the generals, saying any decisions on moving U.S. forces in the region would depend on their views. At a Chicago news conference in July, for instance, Bush said he would yield to Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Iraq commander.
"General Casey will make the decisions as to how many troops we have there," Bush said, adding: "He'll decide how best to achieve victory and the troop levels necessary to do so. I've spent a lot of time talking to him about troop levels. And I've told him this: I said, 'You decide, General.' "
By yesterday, however, Bush indicated that he will not necessarily let military leaders decide, ducking a question about whether he would overrule them. "The opinion of my commanders is very important," he said. "They are bright, capable, smart people whose opinion matters to me a lot." He added: "I agree with them that there's got to be a specific mission that can be accomplished with the addition of more troops before I agree on that strategy."
A senior aide said later that Bush would not let the military decide the matter. "He's never left the decision to commanders," said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so Bush's comments would be the only ones on the record. "He is the commander in chief. But he has said he will listen to those commanders when making these decisions. That hasn't changed."
In other words, he'll do what he always does -- he'll let others sit in the room and voice their opinions, then he'll do whatever the hell he wants, and damn the torpedoes.
The tragedy of the mess in which we find ourselves now is that it was all preventable, if only we had a population with a lick of sense. The truth about the kind of narcissistic sociopath George W. Bush is was out there long before he took office, for anyone who bothered to do some research on his record. Instead, they took solace in his "finding Jesus" and the blind faith that he was no longer drinking. They took comfort in the notion that either his father would be the one really running the show, or that Cheney would keep him from screwing up too much, never realizing that Cheney was part of the problem. If nothing else, seeing Dick Cheney select himself as the most qualified Vice Presidential nominee should have given people a clue. But no, it was all about how much fun Bush would be to drink beer with, as opposed to that stiff Al Gore, because after all, what's more important? Having a president you'd like to drink beer with, even though you'll never have the opportunity, or have one who can, oh, say, LEAD?
Is there anyone who still believes that we are better off today than we were during the Clinton years?
The progressive blogosphere is split about impeachment, and there are compelling reasons on both sides. There is an argument to be made that being able to hang Bush around the Republicans' heads in 2008 makes it worthwhile putting up with him for two more years -- but that is a highly cynical one. There's an argument that impeaching Bush will start a cycle in which EVERY president is impeached if the opposing party is in control, thus making elections moot. But there's also the argument of accountability. Republicans set the "high crimes and misdemeanors" bar so low with the Clinton impeachment, that it's hard to believer that a president who makes over 1700 signing statements saying that he has no intentions of obeying the laws he is signing, who spies on Americans for no reason, who allows billions of taxpayer money to be funnelled into the pockets of his war profiteering friends while feeding American kids into a meatgrinder, doesn't fall into that category.
Perhaps we can't afford to remove him from office. But can we afford not to? Can the WORLD afford for us not to? And is hoping for a military coup our last hope?
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