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Another Gaffe for the Bush Administration

Earlier this week, Vice President Cheney commented on the calamity that would be U.S. troop withdrawal/redeployment from Iraq:

Withdrawing American troops from Iraq would embolden terrorists and leave the United States and its allies vulnerable to new attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday.

I wholeheartedly disagree with that statement, but the Vice President has been sticking to this rhetoric for over three years now, so it’s not surprising seeing him turning to it again now. But, we very recently learned that General Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, visited the White House a couple of days ago to discuss withdrawing troops from Iraq with the president and his advisers:

The commander met this week with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On Friday, General Casey and Mr. Rumsfeld met with President Bush at the White House. A senior White House official said that General Casey did not present a formal plan for Mr. Bush’s approval but rather a concept of how the United States might move forward after consulting with Iraqi authorities, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Let’s make no bones about this: General Casey’s plan is withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Period. The very same withdrawal Vice President Cheney called “the worst possible thing we could do”. It’s not only Mr. Cheney who thinks what General Casey is proposing is a supremely bad idea. Senator Frist joined in expressing his disapproval:

“Withdrawal is not an option. Surrender is not a solution,” argued Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.

Senator McCain chimed in with his two cents:

During the Senate debate, John McCain, R-Ariz., said leaving Iraq would “risk disaster” there. “Withdrawal and fail, or commit and succeed,” he said.

And here is what President Bush said about withdrawal after he returned from Iraq a couple of weeks ago:

“It’s bad policy,” Mr. Bush said in a Rose Garden news conference Wednesday, about six hours after he returned from Iraq. “I know it may sound good politically. It will endanger our country to pull out of Iraq before we accomplish the mission.”

I keep hearing that the Democrats are the ones who are all over the place on Iraq, but it looks like their differences pale in comparison to where the Republicans are. You have the vice president and two highly visible senators saying withdrawal not only isn’t a smart thing to do, but it emboldens the terrorists and risks the very security we have been protecting since 9/11. And then you have the top American commander in Iraq briefing the president on a plan to withdrawal troops. Whoops. I wonder who knows more about what’s best for American troops in Iraq, a handful of politicians in Washington or the lead commander on the ground?

The last five words of President Bush’s quote above are ones the Republicans will find plenty of time to play with: “before we accomplish the mission.” This purposefully nebulous term has been included in several Republican talking points for some time now, just so it can be parsed in a particular manner when it’s politically expedient to do so. Here’s some interesting information from the New York Times article I linked to above:

If executed, the plan could have considerable political significance. The first reductions would take place before this falls Congressional elections, while even bigger cuts might come before the 2008 presidential election.

There it is. To whomever wasn’t convinced the Bush administration has been playing politics with Iraq all along, here’s your proof. And this gets us back to the issue of incompetence in government. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to govern competently when every move is made with a sole political purpose in mind. It’s all politics all the time with the Bush administration, and our country is worse off for it.