The ISG is Bush's way out, but soldiers will have to die through the election

(Reposted - two new posts below the next picture)

I've talked alot about how Bush's rhetoric has forced the narrow "course" to which we've "stayed." He couldn't lower troop levels or he'd "cut and run," and he couldn't raise troop levels without admitting it was a mistake going in with Rumsfeld's lean "quick and agile" force.

So, since the campaign of 2004 when Bush formally crafted Iraq as a political wedge issue, our troops have been forced to follow the current policy. "Stand and Bleed." Undermanned, without the resources to do the job.

The appointment of the Iraq Survey Group, headed by James Baker, is Bush's way out. You can guarantee that even in recommending a radical change in course, Baker will construct that recommendation such that it doesn't criticize the years of poor policy on Iraq.

Baker was apparently on This Week

James A. Baker III .... said today that he expected the group to depart from Mr. Bush’s call to “stay the course” and strongly hinted that he would embrace a significant change of direction after the Nov. 7 Congressional elections. .....

Even while heading the commission, Mr. Baker has been talking to President Bush regularly and is unlikely to issue suggestions that the president has not tacitly approved.

Two points to note. First, the entire charade of the ISG is being coordinated by the White House as an "independent" shell organization through which they can implement advice that centrist Dems and outside analysts have been pushing for years.

Second, most disgustingly, Baker has said all along that the recommendations would come only after the election. A possible solution, a better answer for Iraq, has been slowrolled because it might negatively affect the Republican campaign.

The White House is more than willing to let US soldiers die on the current course rather than adopt a change that might negatively affect their chances in this election.

This is a crime. Of all the other bullshit this administration has pulled, this is the one that angers me the most. They have taken the honest patriotism of 325 young Americans just this week and poured their blood on the desert in their pursuit of politics.

That one month political delay has real world costs.

October currently projects 124 dead and 1,300+ wounded.

I've said it before, I wish I believed in Hell.