Don't you dare call it a change of course!

Or flipflopping, going back on his word, changing his mind, or actually asking for directions!

He's just widening the field of options, opening up the discussion, uh... developing a new plan (#327)....

The Bush administration is retooling its Iraq war strategy. U.S. diplomats will soon sit across the table from their Iranian counterparts, as they did recently with the Syrians, to discuss ways Iraq’s neighbors can play a more positive role. Washington reportedly has also invited the United Nations (Guardian) to have a more direct presence in Iraq, including a larger role for its humanitarian missions and even the potential creation of a UN command. Finally, once the surge of troops into Baghdad tapers down, the U.S. military will increasingly look to shift its role in Iraq away from combat operations and into training and advisory missions (WashPost).

If any of these steps sound familiar, it’s because many of them were recommendations from the Iraq Study Group report, the blue-ribbon panel commissioned by Congress to find an alternative strategy on Iraq. Coolly received by the White House after its publication last December, the report has been dusted off and given a second look by Bush administration officials.

Soon it will have been Georgie's idea all along cuz he meant to do that. He's the Deciderer, remember. The Commander Guy does not change his squinty steely vision of the world. The world changes for him.

Georgie sent to the principal's office

Booman knows he is in trouble:
"The Iraq Study Group put to a permanent end all the happy talk, spin, and talking points over Iraq. It's a disaster. Even if Bush listened to the ISG's recommendations it would still end in disaster. But, in that scenario, Bush would at least be able to buy some time. His refusal to take the gift is putting the Washington Establishment in a bind. The Brits are freaking out, the Republicans and Democrats are freaking out. They cannot and will not accept Bush's stance. Bush does not even have much of a constituency to argue his case. Rick Santorum would be willing to do it, but he is leaving office.

Rumsfeld turned on the war and is gone. Jane Harman lost her seat on Intelligence. Lieberman was kicked out of the Democratic Party. The Republicans have very little to gain by sticking with the President.

If Bush doesn't make a dramatic change of course, he will leave the GOP no choice but to accede to impeachment proceedings. The exact pretext for Bush and Cheney's removal, and the make-up of the caretaker government, will have to be quietly worked out, but you can be sure that the long knives are out and many power players are going to be spending the holidays plotting out scenarios that will get us out of this nightmare...and fast.

We can talk all we want about where the public is, or how we'd do better to focus on other things, but that is utter, total, hogwash. Nothing can be done until Bush recognizes that Iraq is a total loss and begins to act rationally. If he won't, and there are no signs that he will, then it won't be the Dems that are the leading force behind impeachment...it will his own father's people. It will be the big business Republicans. They don't give a damn whether the rank and file bought all that propaganda about Islamofascism or not. They'll send out the signal and the media will get on board.

All the Dems have to do is provide the direct constitutional crisis that leads to articles of impeachment and the rest will take care of itself.

You cannot ignore the wisemen of Washington on matters of urgent foreign policy."

The Deciderer has decided to pretend to listen

Thereby becoming the Listenerer!
But listening does NOT mean comprehending nor actually doing anything.

Via Josh Marshall, MSNBC:
"The challenge for Bush's team was to make the president appear as though he were taking the release of the [ISG] report seriously, without necessarily embracing its conclusions. In the days following the report's release, Bush the Decider transformed himself into Bush the Listener. Usually prickly with war critics—on the rare occasions he spoke to them at all—the president now invited them in from the cold and kept quiet.

. . .

The results of that effort will be unveiled next week, when Bush is expected to announce what he calls "The New Way Forward," his latest plan to salvage the mission in Iraq."

Leadership has nothing to do with avoiding being found wrong

Atrios:
"[Dan Senor]said former colleagues had told him they felt comforted by the recognition that there were no good options, because despite all of the intellect brought to the endeavor, the members of the panel had failed to make the leap from strategy to implementation. “It’s easy to suggest these steps in theory, but we haven’t been able to figure out the how,” Mr. Senor said. “Now, neither have these 10 wise men and woman.”

"Members of the Bush administration, however, would rather continue with the catastrophe than have to admit that maybe someone else has more of a clue . They are comforted by the fact that there's no way to find the pony, even though they, you know, started looking for the damn thing to begin with."

Why Baker is the wrong man to assess the mess in Iraq

Because he is too incestuously tied to the Bush cabal, the Saudis, and the war itself. You don't get someone who supported the war to go and criticize it.

As Glenn Greenwald says:
"If you go to a doctor for an operation and he completely botches your surgery and you lose an organ due to his abject ineptitude and recklessness, you don't go back to that doctor for repair surgery; you find another one. If you go to a lawyer who almost destroys your company through complete ignorance of your basic legal obligations, you don't stay with that lawyer in the hope that he will get you out of the disaster he created for you; you retain another one. All of that is just basic common sense.

Yet here we are, revering and listening to and following the same dense, amoral people who could not have been more wrong about everything they recommended and asserted prior to this war, while we scorn or (at best) ignore those who were so right. As but one example, one of the appointees on the Commission was the wildly extremist, warmongering American Enterprise Institute's Michael Rubin, though he is really different only in degree, not in kind, from most of the other Commission members and "experts" on whom they relied.

Worse, the people to whom we are listening do not recognize they were wrong. They believe they were right and that what we need is more of their great wisdom and advice, in greater doses. As a result, they are using exactly the same premises and assumptions and moral calculus that they used to bring about this tragedy, and astoundingly, there seem to be enough people -- at least in Washington -- willing to embrace the fantasy that somehow, this time around, listening to them will bring about better results."

John Aravosis at Americablog:
"... I do get the sense that the Study Group never really considered the possibility that Iraq is already lost. Simpson and Perry seemed almost surprised when I suggested that they convince me that Iraq isn't already dead. I fear that it's still not PC to suggest in polite company that the war is over, we lost. And I fear just as much that the Study Group may not have seriously considered this possibility - the proposition that nothing we do will matter in the end, and that as bad as it sounds, the only solution is to get out now."

The Iraq Study Group report.

Matthew Yglesias discusses the good and bad news about the Iraq Study Group report.

The good news? "that it's filled with accurate observations about the situation in Iraq."

The rest? Not so good:
"So in review, the most conciliation-oriented Shiite figure is losing influence. The Shiite head of government has refused to disband militias. That may be because the heads of the two most influential Shiite organizations in the country are militia leaders. At least one of them has put the creation of autonomous regions as the centerpiece of his political agenda. One of the two most influential Sunni political leaders has put preventing the creation of such regions as the centerpiece of his political agenda. The other major Sunni political leader is wanted for arrest by the Shiite-dominated government."

TPM Muckraker's Justin Rood notes one of the ISG's ideas is to force bureaucrats to serve in Iraq:
"Are you a federal government employee? You've probably been asked -- more than once -- to help the mighty Iraq rebuilding effort by volunteering to fill a post over there for a few months.

Apparently, folks haven't been stepping up to the plate. So you civil servants might not have a choice in the matter, if the Iraq Study Group gets its way. From the final report, Recommendation #74 reads:

In the short term, if not enough civilians volunteer to fill key positions in Iraq, civilian agencies must fill those positions with directed assignments. Steps should be taken to mitigate familial or financial hardships posed by directed assignments, including tax exclusions similar to those authorized for U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq."

Update:
The Independent:

"In a 100-page, bleak, uncompromising report that contained 79 separate recommendations, the Iraq Study Group warned "the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating" and that a regional conflict could be triggered if things continued to slide. It added: "There is no path that can guarantee success but the prospects can be improved."

Many of the report's recommendations had been leaked in advance and in some cases - for instance the deployment of US troops with Iraqi units - are already being carried out on the ground.

But, crucially, the bipartisan report may provide the political cover required by Mr Bush to break from his refusal to alter strategy."

[snip]

"It said there was significant under-reporting of the level of violence in Iraq and raised questions about the effectiveness of US intelligence saying the government "still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias".

Though written overwhelmingly from a US perspective, the report also stresses the issues faced by the Iraqi population. "There is great suffering and the daily lives of many Iraqis show little or no improvement," it says. "Pessimism is pervasive.""

We're not leaving Iraq until the job is done. We're not! We're not! We're not!

"President Bush today proclaimed Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki "the right guy for Iraq," and said the two had agreed to speed the turnover of security responsibility from American to Iraqi forces. But Mr. Bush dismissed a reported decision by an independent bipartisan panel to call for a gradual withdrawal of troops."

[snip]

"The news conference came against a backdrop of rising violence in Iraq and increasing tensions between the two leaders. On Wednesday evening, Mr. Maliki took the unusual step of backing out of a planned meeting with the president, an embarrassment to the White House that came on the heels of publication of a classified memo from National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley that raised doubts about Mr. Maliki's leadership.

Today, both men tried to tamp down any suggestion that the relationship was strained. Mr. Bush said yet again that he has confidence in the Iraqi prime minister."

[snip]

"Still, tensions seemed to bubble just under the surface. The two leaders barely looked at one another during the news conference. And when Mr. Bush, at one point, asked the prime minister if he wanted to continue taking questions from reporters, the prime minister swiveled his head toward the president and shot Mr. Bush an incredulous look."

Bush pushes Poppy and Baker away, refusing to let them fix his mess:

"But the conventional wisdom may have underestimated the president's stubbornness -- and Cheney and Rove's tenacity.

Because at today's press conference in Jordan, following his abbreviated meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Bush made it abundantly clear that he is waving off the rescue attempt by longtime Bush family fixer James A. Baker III. He'd rather stay the course.

News reports this morning indicate that Baker's bipartisan Iraq Study Group will next week officially recommend a gradual pullback of American troops from Iraq.

But in Amman, Bush went out of his way to mock the notion of a "graceful exit" -- and to insist that he's in Iraq for the long haul. "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all," Bush said."