Someone Tell the President the War Is Over

More priceless commentary from Frank Rich (emphasis mine):

These are the tea leaves that all Republicans, not just Chuck Hagel, are reading now. Newt Gingrich called the Hackett near-victory "a wake-up call." The resolutely pro-war New York Post editorial page begged Mr. Bush (to no avail) to "show some leadership" by showing up in Ohio to salute the fallen and their families. A Bush loyalist, Senator George Allen of Virginia, instructed the president to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother camping out in Crawford, as "a matter of courtesy and decency." Or, to translate his Washingtonese, as a matter of politics. Only someone as adrift from reality as Mr. Bush would need to be told that a vacationing president can't win a standoff with a grief-stricken parent commandeering TV cameras and the blogosphere 24/7.

[...]

Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.

Ouch, that's gonna leave a scar.

I think, though, that there's going to be an even nastier battle between the politicians and the military leadership. We've already seen a glimpse of this this past week.

The problem is, that while we've given up all hope of "mission accomplished" (what exactly was the mission again?) the war will drag on for quite some time to come because Dipshit is too stupid to recognize that he's lost and Rove is too busy worrying about whether he'll be hung for treason to be of any help in mapping out an effective political strategy for Dear Leader.

Meanwhile, the neocons are whispering in Dear Leader's ear that Iran is next. When aWol tells you "all options are on the table, but war is a last resort", you can bet that exactly the opposite is the case; that war is actually the first resort and they are simply looking for plausible enough justification to "sell" the American public (can you say "mushroom cloud"? I knew you could).