Plan B from Outer Space

For weeks the news has been that W is about to announce his new Iraq strategy. He called in the grown-ups, the Iraq Study Group to give him something to go on, but they didn’t give him the answers he wanted so he had to go elsewhere for answers.
This reminds me of something I just read in a Donald Westlake novel. Westlake is a trip, he writes crime novels from the point of view of the criminals. Anyways, he discussed the Select Committee for Intelligence, I’ll paraphrase, “you gather all this intelligence, and then you select that which supports the conclusions you already reached.”
It is a matter of public record that this is what the administration did when they were ginning up the Iraq war.
An NPR report the other day suggested that when Bush announces his new strategy, it will sound a lot like a recent report from the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Kagan and retired Army General Jack Keane. Here’s some bullet points;
>National Guard units must accept longer tours.
>Transfer equipment from non-deployed Guard and Reserve units.
>Military industry mobilizes to provide replacement equipment.
>Increase reconstruction aid and increase CERP funds.
>Increase ground forces end strength.
>Call for young people to volunteer for armed forces.
>Require a unity of effort from the Iraqi government.
If you think that this sounds reasonable, you’re probably part of the twenty-some percent of the public that still thinks Bush can walk on water. The American Enterprise Institute is home to Cro-Magnon Neo-Cons like Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich, and William Krystol. It’s interesting to go on their website and read the happy bullshit these guys have been writing for the last five years. These dead-enders will give up this snakebit crusade when we pry it from their cold dead fingers.