I Had to Laugh

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House has for the first time claimed ownership of an Iraq withdrawal plan, arguing that a troop pullout blueprint unveiled this past week by a Democratic senator was "remarkably similar" to its own.

It also signaled its acceptance of a recent US Senate amendment designed to pave the way for a phased US military withdrawal from the violence-torn country.

The statement by White House spokesman Scott McClellan came in response to a commentary published in The Washington Post by Joseph Biden, the top Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he said US forces will begin leaving Iraq next year "in large numbers." ...

Even though President George W. Bush has never publicly issued his own withdrawal plan and criticized calls for an early exit, the White House said many of the ideas expressed by the senator were its own.

In the statement, which was released under the headline "Senator Biden Adopts Key Portions Of Administration's Plan For Victory In Iraq," McClellan said the Bush administration welcomed Biden's voice in the debate.

"Today, Senator Biden described a plan remarkably similar to the administration's plan to fight and win the war on terror," the spokesman went on to say.

I'm sure President Bush is glad to have the Democrats finally signing on to the administration's plan for withdrawing the troops next year. Haven't you gotten tired of the Democrat's obstructionism on this? I know I have.
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Of course, Biden's article was titled 'Time for An Iraq Timetable', and that 'timetable' thing is still not one of the President's ideas.

And Biden did suggest that "we need a detailed, public plan for Iraq, with specific goals and a timetable for achieving each one." That's not just one timetable, but several. And a public plan, with specific goals? Not W's style, I'm afraid.

Biden's premise is, essentially, that troops will have to start coming home, because our military can't sustain current troop levels indefinitely, and that recycling tired troops for fourth and fifth deployments won't work. And our military presence has started to become counterproductive anyway. Don't expect the White House to agreee with these premises, either.

Biden's point is that since we can't stay much longer, we might want to have a plan for how we can leave without everything going to hell. Biden then goes on to list the various things that need to be fixed, and accounted for, and this is where his article starts to get Bushian.

He offers a lengthy to-do list, not a plan. And how he thinks it could possibly be accomplished in around six months is beyond me. Especially with the same old gang in charge. But here, as Biden engages in the pretense of offering solutions while wallowing in vagueness, and the surreality of thinking that there's a Hollywood ending just around the corner, that could have been borrowed from the White House. Maybe that's what Scott McClellan is talking about.