Mock the Press

"As Senate Democrats began anew to try to force President Bush to withdraw American troops, each move by the White House seems calculated to shift deadlines and benchmarks forward -- and postpone a retreat from Iraq until after Bush leaves office in January 2009. "

When Bush first announced the surge exactly six months ago, the clear indication was that there would be significant progress resulting within a few months.

Consider, for instance, how at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Jan. 11, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice predicted significant progress within two or three months. Here is video of the hearing. This exchange with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is at 2:21.

Obama: "Are you telling me that if in six months or whatever time frame you are suggesting that in fact the Maliki government has not performed these benchmarks -- which, by the way, remain not sufficiently explicit, I think, for a lot of us to make decisions on, but let's assume that that surfaces over the next several weeks that this is being debated -- that at that point, you are going to suggest to the Maliki government that we are going to start phasing down our troop levels in Iraq?"

Rice: "Senator, I want to be not explicit about what we might do because I don't want to speculate. But I will tell you this, the benchmark that I'm looking at -- the oil law is important, the political process is extraordinary important -- that the most important thing that the Iraqi government has to do right now is to reestablish the confidence of its population that it's going to be even-handed in defending it. That's what we need to see over the next two or three months, and I think that over the next several months they're going to have to show that."

Obama: "Or else what? . . . "

Rice: "Or this plan -- or this plan is not -- this plan is not going to work."

But yesterday, Bush was suggesting that the clock had just started. "They just showed up," he said of the additional troops, who have been steadily arriving for months. "And they're now beginning operations in full."

'In a While'

There had been much speculation (see yesterday's column, A Karl Rove Solution for Iraq?) that Bush would unveil a new talking point, emphasizing his intent to draw down U.S. forces next year and move toward a more limited mission if security conditions improve.

But Bush made only the vaguest assertion along those lines.

As Jeff Zeleny and Sheryl Gay Stolberg write in the New York Times: "Fearful of a Republican rebellion over Iraq that his own aides believe could force him to change course, President Bush said Tuesday that the United States would be able to pull back troops 'in a while,' but asked Congress to wait until September to pass judgment on a future military presence there....

"[T]he president signaled more clearly than before that he might be open to shifting toward a smaller, more limited mission in Iraq in the future -- without stating precisely when."