El Prez and Iraq according to NRO

As I have said before, I enjoy reading National Review Online, partly for enlightenment, partly for entertainment, and sometimes for the giddy breathless feeling you get when you watch the intellectual equivalent of someone hitting themselves in the head with a hammer. Here is a paragraph from their most recent roundup of the weeks news with their unique spin. The emphasis and snide [comments] are strickly my own.

The White House has now completed a repudiation of its "stay the course" rhetoric — a repudiation that began, fitfully, months ago. Since no one — not even hawks — has much interest in staying the course if that means continuing to do exactly the same things we have been doing in Iraq, [NOW they tell us!] the administration's rhetorical adjustment is shrewd [hmm. Too bad it's not an actual adjustment]. Bush also gave a frank press conference [is this also a change of course?], acknowledging the disappointments and failures in Iraq and vowing to find new ways to address them. Since people had begun to suspect that his optimism on Iraq was detached from reality [suspect?], this adjustment too was necessary. But, as ever, the most important events are on the ground. The Baghdad security plan has, predictably, failed. General Casey says he's considering asking for more troops for Baghdad, and he should [about time, but the Gen'l could have used better timing, from the Bushies point of view]. Meanwhile, we are creating benchmarks for Iraqi political performance as a way of pressuring Prime Minister Maliki to make the difficult choice to confront the Shia militias that are helping drive Iraq into the abyss. It is often said that there isn't a purely military solution to Iraq's problems. But neither is there a purely political one. We need to try to do a better job on the security front so that the Iraqi government has the breathing room it needs to do the work that is necessary on the political front [it took us three and a half years to figure this out?!]. This will take time, and we hope the White House has bought itself some with this repositioning.

Yes, but time is about all it may have bought. As long as the architects of this fiasco are still at the helm, I don't see how much can change. If you read this paragraph carefully, you will realize that it is a more telling indictment of the war in Iraq than anything put out by people like Andrew Sullivan or Moveon.org. After all, the editors of NRO have always tried to present the best case for the Bush administration, and now it is reduced to crowing about a little extra bought time and, after more than three years, calling for more troops.

Whatever the Bushies try, let's hope it works.