Guess What?

You're not going to believe this, but President Bush and all his top advisors want to keep troops in Iraq longer. This is really a stunner because everyone was waiting with such apprehension to see what the President would do. Would he call for troops to stay until the end of time, or just the end of his term? It's been agony, all the wondering.

President Bush's senior advisers on Iraq have recommended he stand by his current war strategy, and he is unlikely to order more than a symbolic cut in troops before the end of the year, administration officials told The Associated Press Tuesday.

The recommendations from the military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker come despite independent government findings Tuesday that Baghdad has not met most of the political, military and economic markers set by Congress.

And guess what, military officials aren't buying the GAO report because they don't like what it says the information is, like, so last month.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) said Pentagon officials had told Republican leaders that the GAO had relied on outdated information. Because the agency was told simply to assess whether the benchmarks had been met, the GAO was set up to deliver a negative report, Blunt said. He added that lawmakers were far more interested in the assessment coming next week from Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker [...]

The GAO concluded that all forms of violence remain high in Iraq -- causing senior military officials to complain that the report did not consider statistics for August, when, they said, trends in sectarian violence and the performance of the Iraqi security forces improved.

"They use the end of July as the data and evidentiary cutoff and therefore are not taking into account any gains in any of the benchmarks that may have become more clear throughout August," one official said.

Apparently there was just a rush of political and economic and security progress in August, right around the time that 500 Yazidis were killed in a previously stable area of the country, I'd gather.

Did I mention that the military officials gave no facts to support their argument that they're right and the GAO is wrong?

We see exactly what's going on here. The surge was initially defined as to give breathing space for a political reconciliation. That didn't happen, nor did the surge even curb violence, so the Administration is moving the goalposts and declaring that the surge created "bottom-up reconciliation" which is nothing more than militias and former insurgents arming themselves for the civil struggle to come.

The White House insists that Mr. Bush’s fresh embrace of Sunni leaders simply augments his consistent support of Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

But some of Mr. Bush’s critics regard the change as something far more significant, saying they believe it amounts to a grudging acknowledgment by the White House of something these critics themselves have long asserted — that Iraq will never become the kind of cohesive, unified state that could be a democratic beacon for the Middle East.

“They have come around to the inevitable,” said Peter W. Galbraith, a former American diplomat whose 2006 book, “The End of Iraq,” argued that Mr. Bush was trying to rebuild a nation that never really existed, because Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds had never adopted a common Iraqi identity. “He has finally recognized that fact, and is now trying to work with it,” Mr. Galbraith said Tuesday.

I would argue that he's just looking for anything to prolong the war and save face, so he latched on to the Sunni tribes who will still allow themselves to be seen with him. Indeed, he said, when cameras weren't rolling so it's more credible, that his goal is to force the next President to "stay longer" in Iraq. Keith Olbermann lambasted him for this remark, with good reason.

And there it is, sir. We’ve caught you.

Your goal is not to bring some troops home — maybe — if we let you have your way now;

Your goal is not to set the stage for eventual withdrawal;

You are, to use your own disrespectful, tone-deaf word, playing at getting the next Republican nominee to agree to jump into this bottomless pit with you, and take us with him, as we stay in Iraq for another year, and another, and another, and anon.

Be sure to read that whole thing.

So where do we go from here? If the Democrats weren't so consistently weak it would be simple; you shut down funding for this disaster before it's too late. All you have to do is not fund the war, and take the Feingold-Reid option of a date certain after which no money will be spent (it's big news that Kos finally signed on to this, BTW). But whether or not Democrats have the stones to do that is unclear. What's more likely is that something comes out of this...

Rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats, meanwhile, are redoubling efforts to find bipartisan cooperation that could pressure the administration to begin bringing troops home. Six House Republicans and five Democrats released a letter yesterday to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio), asking them "to put an end to the political in-fighting over the war in Iraq and allow the House to unite behind a bipartisan strategy to stabilize the country and bring our troops home."

Breaking with the GOP leadership, the Republicans -- Michael N. Castle (Del.), Charlie Dent (Pa.), Phil English (Pa.), Scott Garrett (N.J.), Jim Gerlach (Pa.) and Tom Petri (Wis.) -- said they saw no reason to wait for testimony by Petraeus and Crocker.

"While we are hopeful that their report will show progress, we should not wait any longer to come together in support of a responsible post-surge strategy to safely bring our troops home to their families," the letter said.

...closer to the Lamar Alexander/Ken Salazar "Remember the Iraq Study Group" resolution, which is easily circumvented by the White House and makes everybody feel good for about 10 seconds before they realize it's completely toothless.

Very depressing.