Bush to "Stay the Course": Offers New Batch of Slogans to Win War

No one should doubt that President Bush's trip to Baghdad was anything more than a photo op. The only military operation that day was protecting and covering the president's political ass. Today in Iraq and Informed Comment are worth a visit if the reader wishes to compare Bush's rosy picture to the reality. So the debate in the House last week was just a charade designed for the midterm elections. Here's more from The New York Times (hat tip to Laura Rozen of War and Piece):

Democrats countered that the Bush administration had made a series of mistakes in Iraq and that its policies needed to be changed, not celebrated. "On every important aspect of the Iraq war, President Bush and his advisers have been wrong," said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader.

" 'Stay the course,' Mr. President, is not a strategy, it's a slogan," she added. "I will vote against this resolution because it is an affirmation of President Bush's failed policy in Iraq."

(snip)

Democrats asserted that Republicans had carried the politicization of foreign policy debates to new heights. They were particularly outraged that the Pentagon had distributed an "Iraq Floor Debate Prep Book" to some lawmakers with talking points defending administration policy. Some Democratic leaders also received the report, apparently in error; a Pentagon official sent a second e-mail message a few hours later, trying to recall it.

It's the last paragraph that has me burning today. The military is not a political arm of the Republican Party. If Bush's Iraq policy is failing, he needs to fire people like Donald Rumsfeld, not hand the American people a song and a dance to obscure his own incompetence and the incompetence of advisers like Rumsfeld.