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The AP is reporting that Bush might actually be listening to reason:
President Bush will tell the nation this week he plans to reduce the American troop presence in Iraq by about 30,000 by next summer, but will condition those and further cuts on continued progress, The Associated Press has learned.Continued progress being the key phrase..
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Comments (9)
He deserves no credit. The surge has to end in that time frame anyway because that's when he runs out of troops to deploy.
Bush is dropping a glass from a cliff here and taking credit for gravity. In a just world, we'd laugh this silliness out of the room.
Yeah, this is the most barely minimal troop reduction possible. There is NOTHING noteworthy about this Bush "announcement."
Greg's got a point; however, to say there's NOTHING noteworthy about this story is a little bit of exaggeration.
The fact that President "MORE TROOPS ALL THE TIME" Bush is willing to consider withdrawing 30k (which could be a drop in the bucket) is something of progress.
Even if you think Democrats are a shoe-in for '08, Bush still has a year left in office and a lot can happen in that year (more troop surges / reduction), so we can't act like nothing he does matters.
Troops. Coming. Home. That's a good thing.
Ted Koppel had a great commentary on this on NPR/All Things Considered last night using the analogy that America loves a discount (25 thousand troops coming home) - even if there was a markup (the surge) beforehand.
Petraeus is Selling; Is America buying:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14330122
Jen:
I guess I want to get across that no consideration happened here. Unless you put the president into 'madness of King George' territory, the facts made it impossible to sustain the surge beyond that point. Those 30,000 troops have to come back to the U.S. by then -- and the Army and Marines lack 30,000 available troops to send in their place.
The Boston Globe reported on this in depth. Long story short, though: the president's can show us a hog w/ L'Oréal on, but he's still just selling us bacon. The surge has to end. He has no choice. So we need to deny Republicans the benefit of acknowledging what the simple facts are forcing them to do.
Don't forget that he has publically stated that he will begin pulling out some troops so that the GOP candidates won't have to take so much heat for the war.
He is the Supreme Asshat.
No, not playing politics with peoples lives at all there are you Georgieboy?
Greg, fair point.
Ruby, no shit. He said that?
I'll look for the quote Jen.
I nearly fell out of my chair when I heard it.
I remember it was on tv. I thought it was on Bill Maher, but it was actually Kieth Olbermann and it was in regards to some things Bush said in his interviews for the book, Dead Certain.
Here's KO talking to the author and its mentioned in here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzKh9fUArNE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fdandelionsalad%2Ewordpress%2Ecom%2F2007%2F09%2F06%2Folberman%2Dauthor%2Ddead%2Dcertain%2Dnew%2Dbush%2Dbook%2Dvideo%2Diraq%2F