Cue The Fred Sanford-Style Heart Attack

I'm just so shocked that the Bush Administration and military officials would try to change the target date for assessing the situation in Iraq! It's a "surge" to my aortic valve! I'm coming to ya, Elizabeth!

The Bush administration and U.S. military officials predicted Thursday that a key September report would show progress in Iraq, but that it would be November before they could judge the success of the troop buildup.

The comments — coming a day after congressional Democrats failed to force a change in the U.S. war strategy — were a new indication that the White House planned to seek still more time for its troop "surge" to stabilize the situation in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of day-to-day operations in Iraq, said via teleconference from Baghdad that the military would produce the report on time as required by Congress. But, he said, September would be too early to determine whether security improvements would last and whether the buildup had worked.

"In order to do a good assessment, I need at least until November," Odierno said. "If I have 45 more days of looking at those trends, I'll be able to make a bit more accurate assessment — if it's something that we think is going to continue or something that was just a blip."

Here's how this is going to work, by the way. In November they'll say "how about January," and then they'll ask to wait until the spring, and then May, and then September, and then November, and then Bush is out of office and "crew you guys, I'm goin' home."

And it wouldn't be a Bush Administration tactic if it didn't exploit the words of an unnamed soldier for political gain!

Underscoring his view that an extension of the surge is needed, Odierno described a conversation between Command Sgt. Major Neil Ciotola, his top enlisted advisor, and an unnamed Marine lance corporal in Ramadi.

"He looked at my sergeant major and asked, 'We're not going to be given enough time to finish this, are we?' " Odierno said. "I hope that that young Marine warrior is wrong."

Yes, you wouldn't want to break poor Jimmy's heart, would you? Don't you want to hit him a home run and win the big game? He has leukemia!

I like the part, also, where the US Ambassador determines that nothing that happens in Iraq is a measure of progress:

Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday not to place the most significance on the benchmarks.

"In many cases, these benchmarks do not serve as reliable measures of everything that is important," Crocker said, adding that there may be better ways to show progress on, for example, national reconciliation.

How dare you try to assess what's happening in Iraq by making... assessments!

This is all a game to these fucking people. Well, I'm with that nearly 1/3 of House Democrats: not one nickel, not one dime, not one penny, not this time. No more money for failure.