Too Little, Too Late

"By Joseph L. Galloway

McClatchy Newspapers
12/06/2006

After nearly four years of living in what can be charitably described as a state of denial, everyone in Washington, D.C., from President Bush to the Baker Commission to incoming defense secretary Robert Gates, to outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to the study group assembled by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has finally admitted that pretty much nothing is going right in Iraq.

Duh.

Our president, who froze the whole process of planning and fighting a war by declaring that he was “staying the course” even when the course was obviously wrong, finally abandoned those words, if not his dogged pursuit of “victory” in a place which has denied victory to a string of foreign invaders dating back to Alexander the Great.

The Baker Commission issued its report _ which primarily recommended that we begin talking with Iraq’s friends and enemies next door and Iraqi-izing the war by handing things over to Iraqi forces before we begin pulling out in time for the 2008 presidential election _ on a day when 10 American troops were killed on the roads of Iraq by improvised explosive devices."
Michael Yon