No timetable, no benchmarks, no grading, no test

Just the way Bush likes it! He can't fail!



BBC reports on Gates' statements in his Senate hearing:

"The US defence secretary has said there is no timetable for Iraq to prove it has fulfilled commitments required by the US in President Bush's new plan.

But Robert Gates said the US would have a "good idea" of the Iraqi government's success before many new troops went in. "

[snip]

"Responding to questions, he said the new troops would be sent in gradually.

One brigade will go in the middle of this month. A second brigade won't go until the middle of next month," he said.

"And then they will flow at roughly monthly intervals, so that after we have sent in just two or three of the brigades, I think we will... have a pretty good idea whether at least on the military side the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate in terms of fulfilling their commitments.

The defence secretary also ruled out announcing a timetable for an eventual troop withdrawal.

"I think that any time you announce a specific deadline or specific time-line for departing in a situation as volatile as this, you basically give your adversaries the confidence that all they have to do is wait you out," he said. ""

Update: Even Spiegel Online indicates the Germans have figured out what the Big Surge/Long-Term Escalation actually means or doesn't mean:

"Marina Ottaway, the director of the Middle East program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the military too is not convinced that Bush's troop increase will make much of a difference. "Everyone I have talked to says that from the military's point of view, 20,000 divided between Anbar and Baghdad is not really going to be sufficient to bring about stability by force."

[snip]

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung was scathing in its commentary, beginning with the claim: "This war was wrong from the very beginning." The paper writes further:

"The entire world now knows that it will take at least another two years before America will withdraw from its (second) lost war ... Bush wants to pass on the ignominy of defeat to his successor. This president even believes that a victory in Iraq may still be possible ... Bush hopes to be able to extinguish the fire in Iraq with American blood."

And in the International Herald Tribune:
"Instead of giving speeches on new strategies for victory, and sending off another contingent of hapless Americans into the fires of Iraq, the president would have been wiser to declare the American mission is over, and presented a plan for the gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces.

The future of Iraq is in the hands of the Iraqis. And whether through violence, negotiations or accommodation, they will be the ones that will have to determine the prospects of their country. So far, they are making choices the United States abhors — just as the Lebanese did in 1975 and the Bosnians in 1992 — and Washington has no real leverage to alter these decisions.

For the second time in its postwar history, the United States has been defeated in a war — not in military terms, but in its inability to shape political outcomes. The challenge before American leaders now is not to devise plans for prolonging the war, but to find ways for America to regain its power and to realize its interests in light of this setback."