Vitter Speaks--But Only Briefly

"This clever scheme lacked one important ingredient, the participation of Bush himself. He was supposed to play up the post-surge in a 77-minute speech in Cleveland. He failed to, except to note in passing that, with enough troops to secure Iraq, 'we can be in a different position in a while.' This was the same day that Baker's story ran. A White House official said the president might have dropped emphasis on the post-surge era from his speech out of annoyance over the leak to Baker. Or, since he was speaking from scribbled notes, he might just have forgotten.

"Two days later, Bush had a prepared text for his opening remarks at a press conference. Once more, the aftermath of the surge got short shrift. The closest he came was this comment: 'When we start drawing down our forces in Iraq, it will be because our military commanders say the conditions on the ground are right, not because pollsters say it will be good politics.'

"I recount this episode because it makes a simple point: Bush's aides may be eager to soften his message on Iraq, but the president isn't. Another way to put it--exaggerating a bit--is that his aides were fearful of political repercussions and he wasn't."

Maybe those reliable sources, whoever they are, will now be considered a little less reliable.

Speaking of the Weekly Standard, its editor, Bill Kristol, has stirred up quite a reaction with this Washington Post opinion piece saying that Bush will be viewed as having had a successful presidency. Kristol writes of "a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless 'benchmark' report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome . . .

"In late 2006, I didn't think we would win, as Bush stuck with the failed Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey strategy of 'standing down' as the Iraqis were able to 'stand up,' based on the mistaken theory that if we had a 'small footprint' in Iraq, we'd be more successful. With the new counterinsurgency strategy announced on Jan. 10, backed up by the troop 'surge,' I think the odds are finally better than 50-50 that we will prevail. We are routing al-Qaeda in Iraq, we are beginning to curb the Iranian-backed sectarian Shiite militias and we are increasingly able to protect more of the Iraqi population."

Well, I think we can safely say he's not part of the cut-and-run crowd.

Time's Jay Carney begs to differ:

"Blowing past years of disastrous mismanagement of the war, Kristol says that Bush will ultimately be viewed a winner because 'we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome' in Iraq. Now, even if you believed from the beginning that invading Iraq and toppling Saddam was the right thing to do. And even if you've never wavered from those convictions. And even if you argued last winter that more troops were necessary and that 'surging' was the right thing to do.

"And even if you insist that there have been some modest -- very modest -- signs of improvement in a few (not many!) areas of Iraq in the past few months, wouldn't you be deluding yourself, and testing the gullibility of your readers (given the cumulative experience of the past four-plus years, and all the mistaken predictions you and others had made about how well things were going in Iraq), if you suddenly decided that these few modest signs of improvement somehow proved that a) 'we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome', and b) Bush's presidency will therefore be judged a success?"

Arianna Huffington, who always seems to be at the right party--or on the right train--lets loose:

"I know it's a pretty high bar, but Bill Kristol, the founder of the Project for a New American Century that spawned the Iraq war, the man whose editorials often seem to be inserted directly into the president's speeches, and who once boasted that 'Dick Cheney does send over someone to pick up 30 copies of [The Weekly Standard] every Monday,' has now just written the single most deceptive piece of the entire war.