Froomkin on Bush's "new phase" in Iraq

as dear leader prepares to announce his plan for a "post-surge phase" in iraq, dan froomkin offers us this...

[I]t's time to move the goalposts. Or, carrying the analogy further, to replace them with toothpicks.

meanwhile, as i said in the previous post, we ain't leavin'... you can bank on it...

A Bush administration report to Congress citing a lack of progress by the Baghdad government is "a look at the starting line" of the U.S. troop surge and shouldn't be used by critics to demand withdrawal, a White House spokesman said Tuesday.

"What Congress will get this week is a snapshot of the beginning of the retooling of the mission in Iraq," said Tony Snow, who defended the administration's war policy and argued that it's too soon to be talking about end-game strategies.

"Some of the benchmarks have been made, some of them haven't," he said. Snow confirmed the coming report would say that Iraq has not met all the benchmarks set for it. The nature of the report was revealed earlier to The Associated Press by a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Rebuffing all such talk, President Bush said he won't succumb to political pressure. During a visit to Parma, Ohio on Tuesday, he reiterated that troop levels in Iraq "will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C."

ain't gonna happen...

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