Battered Congress Syndrome

"Still more important, the report asserts, the administration's plan is not a strategy at all, but more a series of operational prescriptions scattered among various documents reviewed by the accountability office."

Karen DeYoung writes in The Washington Post: "The report, after a bleak GAO assessment last summer, cited little improvement in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently of the U.S. military. . . . The report also judged that key Iraqi ministries spent less of their allocated budgets last year than in previous years, and said that oil and electricity production had repeatedly not met U.S. targets."

Opinion Watch

David Brooks writes in the New York Times that the results of the surge are a vindication for Bush and Cheney and what had been perceived as character flaws: "Every personal trait that led Bush to make a hash of the first years of the war led him to make a successful decision when it came to this crucial call.

"Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.

"Bush is an outrageously self-confident man. Well, without that self-confidence he never would have overruled his generals. . . .

"Bush is also a secretive man who listens too much to Dick Cheney. Well, the uncomfortable fact is that Cheney played an essential role in promoting the surge. Many of the people who are dubbed bad guys actually got this one right."

Derrick Z. Jackson writes in his Boston Globe opinion column: "It took five years, the deaths of 4,100 US soldiers, and the wounding of 30,000 more to make Iraq safe for Exxon. . . .

"[W]hile the American taxpayer is being turned inside out by the war, and while families bury the brave, the corporate colonialists get all the resources."

Iran Watch

H.D.S. Greenway writes in his Boston Globe opinion column: "Is the Bush White House talking itself into attacking Iran as its moral duty to save the world from Iran? Condoleezza Rice's State Department is hoping for a diplomatic solution, and Robert Gates, at Defense, is not the attack dog that his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, was. For the moment they seem to have Bush's ear. But although our supernationalist vice president, Dick Cheney, may not wield the influence he did in Bush's first term, he retains his unshakable belief in the use of force. And Bush retains his messianic streak."

In Bush's Wake

The Associated Press report: "Nearly 40,000 travelers will remember U.S. President George W. Bush's stopover in London. Their flights were canceled or delayed at Heathrow Airport to accommodate him, according to British Airways."

David Millward writes in the Telegraph: "Handling the President's airborne entourage of two Boeing 747s, one Boeing 757 and four helicopters led to the closure of one runway for brief periods during a rehearsal and also when Mr Bush arrived and left last weekend. . . .

"The decision to use one of the world's busiest airports for the American president's airborne entourage rather than a military airfield was condemned by Willie Walsh, British Airways chief executive. . . .

"'The disruption we experienced over four days during the last week was something out of the ordinary - and also completely unnecessary,' he told BA staff in the company newspaper."

Homage Watch

Marisa Lagos writes in the San Francisco Chronicle about the efforts of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco to rename the "Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant" the "George W. Bush Sewage Plant."

"[T]he handful of friends who dreamed this up over beers one night say they have already collected 8,500 signatures in support of the plan - 1,300 more than the minimum needed to put the question to city voters in November. . . .

"Organizers of the petition drive believe the measure will pass, noting that 2006's Proposition J calling for the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney passed with 58 percent of the vote.

"The biggest opposition in this Democratic stronghold, McConnell said, is people who oppose naming anything after the 43rd president."

Cartoon Watch

David Horsey on the bill collectors, Bill Mitchell on Bush's timeline and Justin Bilicki on reducing harmful emissions.