After two years of villifying anyone who suggested a timetable was needed in Iraq, the Bush administration is reportedly now drafting a timetable for Iraq.

That is rather untrue, as there have been a variety of time contraints, milestones and deadlines to date. That administration has consistently fought against the notion of a timetable for troop withdrawal, and this article makes it clear that that position remains unchanged.

(1) What "ideas"?

(2) Assuming you're willing to treat "blah blah freedom blah blah democracy" as an "idea," then can you perhaps grasp that, to anyone who hasn't had his head stuck in Fox News and LGF for the past 3 years, Bush's "ideas" aren't actually working? And aren't going to work?

Cf. Alexander Haig & Zbigniew Brzezinski, singing from the same page of the hymnal:

HAIG: I think it was very improperly run, the war, because its goals were unachievable. And that is the creation of a model image of American democracy in a country that has no background or no experience. It took us a thousand years of British history, as well as 300 of our own.

We cannot ignore the political history of this region, its recent encounter with colonialism and imperialism. And here we are coming in with a foreign army of a different religion, different culture, devastating the country, killing thousands of Iraqis, destroying the infrastructure of that society, all in the name of democracy. And then we expect the Iraqis to be grateful and to emulate us and build a democratic system. That is what is so fatally flawed in the strategy.

[Note to JJ -- whole exchange is worth a look, maybe even a post.]

I question the credibility of anyone who suggests using the opinions of surrounding countries as the basis for the way ahead.

The Baker/Hamilton team has done just that. The team contains in Baker (for a start) clearly someone who does not believe in the Bush ideas for Iraq. The only question left is which megalamaniac strongman do we put on the throne. I hear Sadaam is available. Allthough a tag team of Sadaam and el Sadr would probably go down equally well. They could kill off each others dissidents.

The Baker/Hamilton team has done just that. The team contains in Baker (for a start) clearly someone who does not believe in the Bush ideas for Iraq. The only question left is which megalamaniac strogman do we put on the thrown. I hear Sadaam is available. Allthough a tag team of Sadaam and el Sadr would probably go ndown equally well. They could kill off each others dissidents.

"We've never been stay the course" Oct 22, 2006 on This Week w/ George Stepanopolus

Foolish Americans......keep believing the liars.

So you have to be a grownup and evaluate anonymous items -- are they plausible? do they fit what other things we've heard? are they meaningfully contradicted by those who should know?

We would all do well to take such sources with a grain of salt, and to consider what invisible turf wars lead to a given "anonymous source"'s decision to speak out.

But to merely *dismiss* anonymous sources *as such* is childish.

Re: the Times story, you might compare George W. Bush, on the record (on *video* no less) saying that our policy has NEVER been to "stay the course." No, really, he says that.

And, as for "sources that average reader would not consider trustworthy" -- well, the Bushies had no problem relying on such sources to sell their Iraq war. So by your lights, how smart are Bush and Cheney?

Anonyous sources give greater credibility than the bodily gasses of junior and unreliable sources. NYTimes and WAPost have made billions of dollars giving credibility to sources that average reader would not consider trustworthy.

Staff Plans are staff plans. Until they are enacted, they are plans. Planning is what a staff does. Junior staffers become administration sources and *POOF* magic happens.

NYTimes has lost its credibility. Leaks during wartime and partisan politics combine with fraudulent reporters and fake photos.

Tell me why they should be trusted?

It's painful to contemplate. The invasion was a stupid, stupid idea. But once we were committed to doing it, we should've done it *right*. It was a freakin' *elective* war, we had all the time we wanted to plan for it -- and we blew it, big-time.

Despite assholes like Glenn Reynolds, Dems (like me) would've much rather seen a successful occupation, despite the plus that would've given to Bush. I doubt it could've come off *very* well, but it could've been done well enough that moving on to Iran or whatever might've seemed plausible.

The amazing thing is that Bush & Cheney ignored that, too. They had no clue. They were miserably, miserably incompetent, and were able to cover that fact up into the 2004 election w/ the help of a poor Dem candidate, a lackadaisical media, and a rabid political pushback.

--Oh, wait, there was a post too, wasn't there? JJ, how do we hold Maliki's feet to the fire *without* some sort of timetable? Any suggestions?

As pre-election pressure mounts from congressional Democrats and Republicans, a new report suggests ...

When is a timetable on Iraq not a timetable? When the Bush administration suggests it:...

James, I think that there’s a broad perception that planning was not done in advance. I have no idea whether that’s the case but I do think that’s the perception.

That's certainly my perception, largely founded on statements from various Pentagon and State Dept sources who have come forward and stated as much. I seem to recall some Pentagon official recently quoted as saying Rumsfeld threatened to fire anyone that even mentioned the wisdom of putting together a plan for the aftermath of the invasion -- just in case we weren't welcomed as liberators.

…and, one would hope, were at least rough-sketched before invading in the first place.

James, I think that there's a broad perception that planning was not done in advance. I have no idea whether that's the case but I do think that's the perception.

We're living in an era in which if it doesn't happen on TV, it didn't happen and that's as true of government planning as it is for anything else. If there's one thing that this administration has failed at, it's in making its case to the American people.

We're more than three years into the war in Iraq and five years into the War on Terror and “just trust us—we know what we're doing” probably is not the greatest sales pitch.