Not On His Watch

During a rambling press conference today, President Bush said, "We’re not leaving [Iraq] so long as I’m the president. That would be a huge mistake." Talk about a nice morale booster for the troops!

A look at the numbers tells us that given the current kill and spending rates indicates that we will sacrifice another 1478 soldiers in that time. The Iraqis will likely lose another 100,375 citizens, and in that time we will likely spend another $400 billion.

But there is something even fouler in Bush's statement. If we are going to stay there another two and a half years, that is a tacit admission that we have no plan to win this thing in the near term. Of course, we have all suspected that all along. Anyone remember the administration's pre-war claims that this would take weeks, not months?

It could be a good thing however, the first step toward accepting defeat is to concede that victory is impossible, which I now believe it is. We really only had one shot at getting this right and we blew it.