A GOOD SUMMARY OF BUSH'S CURRENT WORDS/ACTIONS RE IRAQ

Joe Klein isn't exactly one of my favorite columnists, but he has a good paragraph here.

The President has a far more difficult problem, and quite the opposite of Kerry's. He got us into this mess. He has continually explained the war in platitudes. His imprecise idealism is not only inappropriate now, but has become downright annoying. His five-point plan is built on the quicksand of Ambassador L. Paul Bremer's failed seven-point plan—and it bears little resemblance to the emerging realities on the ground. The truth is, we are in full-scale retreat, both politically and militarily. Bush believes that Iraq is the front line in the war on terrorism, but his Administration just declared a truce with the men he thinks of as terrorists and is now turning security over to local militias. Politically, we have tossed the ball to Lakhdar Brahimi and the U.N. But even Brahimi doesn't have much stroke. The real governing authority in Iraq appears to be the Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, who dictated the al-Sadr solution last week, and in effect vetoed the interim constitution the U.S. proposed and will, no doubt, have final say over Brahimi's new government. The President pretends that none of this is happening. Most Americans sense the President is just pretending, and they are impatiently waiting for someone to say something real.