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IRAQ: THE GROTESQUE PHASE. Cliff May informs us that he is one of the anonymously quoted party attenders in the truly lovely opener to this new Fred Barnes piece:
It turns out you only have to attend a White House Christmas party to find out where President Bush is headed on Iraq. One guest who shook hands with Bush in the receiving line told him, "Don't let the bastards get you down." Bush, slightly startled but cheerful, replied, "Don't worry. I'm not." The guest followed up: "I think we can win in Iraq." The president's reply was emphatic: "We're going to win." Another guest informed Bush he'd given some advice to the Iraq Study Group, and said its report should be ignored. The president chuckled and said he'd made his position clear when he appeared with British prime minister Tony Blair. The report had never mentioned the possibility of American victory. Bush's goal in Iraq, he said at the photo-op with Blair, is "victory."Barnes goes on to quote one official as describing Bush's reaction to Fred Kagan's more-troops plan as "very positive," and then adds in all the usual Barnesisms about the president's boldness and willingness to buck the weary Beltway conventional wisdom and bank his presidency on one last shot at victory, etc., etc., etc. I have nothing in particular to say about all this -- about the president deciding to respond to the fiasco in Iraq with a double-down plan endorsed by perhaps a half dozen residents of the AEI/Weekly Standard building and close to nobody else -- except that it's appalling. And also this, I suppose, regarding the debate over Harry Reid's response to the president's enthusiasm for the Cannon Fodder Plan: While Reid's line on this, taken word for word, is quite logical and in keeping with his call for withdrawal, I too must admit to yearning for a cessation of all deliberate ambiguities and bank-shot calculations in Democrats' stated reactions to the president's Iraq plans, now that the policy direction under discussion is set so squarely in the face of overwhelming public opinion, as well as basic humanity.
--Sam Rosenfeld
