Policy review

The impression we’re supposed to get from Bush's very high-profile Iraq policy review is that Bush is listening to a wide range of brutally honest opinions as he reviews his Iraq strategy, whatever that happens to be.

The reality is that the administration is building a case for rejecting ISG recommendations, at least the ones that call for action that could be interpreted as admitting failure.

The Washington Post story on Bush’s meeting with experts starts by pointing out that Bush is hearing a “blunt and dismal assessment of his handling of Iraq.” We, in turn, are supposed to be satisfied that Bush finally is being told uncomfortable, inconvenient truths.

Normally, we would expect the president’s receiving reliable, unsullied information to be standard operating procedure, but this administration has set the bar so low that we’re expected to throw Bush a parade when he listens to someone telling him the truth.

Remember how you applauded when your baby finally put food in her mouth instead of on her head?

This may be nitpicking, but the story says Bush “heard a blunt and dismal assessment.” One could argue that what is being referred to as dismal isn’t Bush’s handling of Iraq, but the assessment of his handling of Iraq. This is something that wouldn’t escape the notice of professional copy editors. At least it shouldn’t. This lack of clarity could have been resolved by printing what Bush was told about his handling of Iraq, perhaps quoting someone who was at the meeting. But that didn’t happen. In fact, the only other reference to Bush’s alleged brush with reality was that the military experts told Bush the situation in Iraq is “as dire as the study group had indicated.”

Just another subtle layer between us and seeing Bush dressed down or forced to admit failure, courtesy of the editors at the Washington Post, the paper that goes out of its way to avoid calling bush a liar. “By nature,” I suppose.

But we’re veering off course here. After all, this isn’t a critique of the Post story, it’s an indictment of the Bush administration’s policy-review charade.

So Bush was told the situation in Iraq is dire. Well, no shit. Bush didn’t need retired generals to tell him that; a reasonably well-informed 12-year-old could have provided that exact same analysis.

What’s going on at the White House is the same dangerous, destructive bullshit that’s been going on there for the last almost seven years: Bush once again is surrounding himself with people willing to tell him what he wants to hear. At this meeting, military experts and retired generals advised him against troop reductions and against engaging Iran and Syria in talks, neither of which he planned to do anyway. These “carefully choreographed” meetings, as the Post calls them, give Bush the cover he needs to justify doing what he planned to do all along: nothing.

At least nothing the ISG recommends. Those are Bush I’s friends, and there’s no way junior is going to let his father tell him what to do. Lots of children refuse to take their parents’ advice and have to learn things “the hard way.” But hundreds of thousands of lives usually aren’t hanging in the balance, and the impetuous youth who just has to make his own mistakes usually isn’t 60 years old.