Say Anything Blog

This “Bush to announce timetable for Iraq” stuff is getting a bit ridiculous.

Consider this article from the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - The fledgling Iraqi government must “step up and take more responsibility” for the country’s security, a high-ranking White House official said Monday.

At the same time, Dan Bartlett denied in a television interview that the Bush administration’s war policy has been a sweeping “stay the course” commitment, saying “what we aren’t doing is sitting there with our heads in the sand.”

In contrast to earlier White House statements, Bartlett did not deny a New York Times report saying the head of the U.S.-led Multinational Forces in Iraq and the U.S. ambassador were working on a plan that for the first time would set a specific timetable for disarming militias and meeting other political and economic goals.

Bartlett didn’t deny a specific timetable? I think he did, because in the very next paragraph he says:

“I was a bit puzzled about the report over the weekend because it was stating something that we’ve been talking publicly about for months,” the senior White House counselor said on CBS’s “The Early Show.” Bartlett said the goal is to “define demonstrable milestones and benchmarks” and said it has been “very much a part of our strategy all along.”

As I pointed out over the weekend, there is absolutely nothing to support the idea that the Bush administration is going to announce a “timetable for withdrawal.”  Nothing.  From everything I’ve heard, the Bush administration is set to announce a set of goals that must be reached before we can withdraw from Iraq.

I believe what’s going on here is a bit of pre-spin by the media.  They’re trying to play this forthcoming policy announcement on Iraq as a reversal of earlier policy for the Bush administration.  They want Americans to believe that Bush is caving to pressure from opponents and establishing a withdrawal date, but I just don’t think that’s a conclusion that’s supported by what we know so far.