Bush's vast carelessness.

Via Mustang Bobby, Bush demands one last big push in Iraq, ""You've got to remember, whatever the Democrats say, it's Bush still calling the shots. He believes it's a matter of political will. That's what [Henry] Kissinger told him. And he's going to stick with it," a former senior administration official said. "He [Bush] is in a state of denial about Iraq. Nobody else is any more. But he is. But he knows he's got less than a year, maybe six months, to make it work. If it fails, I expect the withdrawal process to begin next fall.""

[snip]

"It's not about liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, spreading democracy, rooting out terror, or anything else. It's about justifying the lies that lead us into the war and vindicating the wrong decisions about the execution of the war once we got there. And to have Henry Kissinger whispering in his ear is Shakespearean in its level of tragic irony; he's trying to win a war he lost thirty-five years ago. And to complete the circle, once again W is having his daddy's pal James A. Baker III bail him out of a losing situation, just as he has done all his life. Sidney Blumenthal gets it exactly right:

It is as though a merciless, omniscient narrator has inserted him to undo and rectify everything at the end of a tragedy. F. Scott Fitzgerald, near the conclusion of "The Great Gatsby," described the reckless scions of privilege: "They were careless people ... They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

So more soldiers will die, more civilizans will be blown up, more terrorists created, and the days will drag on just because the president can't face up to the facts and admit that he's wrong. As long as he has Cheney and Kissinger -- who were there when they lost the last one -- telling him full steam ahead for the sake of his presidency and his legacy, nothing will change.

It's not about Iraq. It never was."

Update: David Kurtz at the TalkingPointsMemo quotes Laura Rosen:
"A U.S. tilt toward the Shiites is a risky strategy, one that could further alienate Iraq's Sunni neighbors and that could backfire by driving its Sunni population into common cause with foreign jihadists and Al Qaeda cells. But elements of the administration, including some members of the intelligence community, believe that such a tilt could lead to stability more quickly than the current policy of trying to police the ongoing sectarian conflict evenhandedly, with little success and at great cost."

So now you have a last big push and a tilt. Sounds kinda wobbly to me.