You gotta pick your unmitigated disasters

Much better to stay in Iraq with no idea why we're there, no idea what we're doing there, no idea when we'll be done doing it, and no idea what signifies that whatever we did was successful.

President Bush understands there is growing U.S. concern over his handling of the Iraq war but will not rely on polls to determine when to withdraw troops, his spokesman said Sunday.

"The president understands how a war can wear on a nation," White House press secretary Tony Snow said. "Whatever the bleakness is, whatever the facts are on the ground, you figure out how to win. You can't do that by reading polls."

"Most people realize simply pulling out would be an absolute unmitigated disaster," Snow said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said she and other Democrats would introduce a resolution this week calling for a phased withdrawal, noting that Bush signed a defense bill last year calling for that in 2006.

"Three years and three months into the war, with all of the losses, the insurgency, the burgeoning civil war that's taking place, an open-ended time commitment is no longer sustainable," she said.

One of these approaches is sane. Care to guess which one?