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The magic numbers of Republicans jumping ship to watch for: 60 to 70 in the House -- 17 or 18 in the Senate. When Democrats hit both those numbers, the end of the war in Iraq will have truly begun.
John Boehner can call it: "dramatic erosion of support in the GOP," if he likes. I personally prefer the term: "rats leaving the sinking ship of Bush's Iraq fiasco."
Bill Richardson:
Here's my strategy -- 3,500 Americans have died. Our troops have become targets. My specific strategy is this: If I were president today, I would withdraw all our forces before the end of this calendar year. But where I differentiate with the other candidates is I leave no residual forces. And my view is this: We cannot do the hard diplomatic work in Iraq until our forces are withdrawn. When 61 percent of the Iraqi people say it's OK for troops in Iraq, American troops, to be shot [it] is wrong. When 70 percent of the Iraqi people say they want Americans out -- Sunni and Shia -- by the end of the calendar year, the time has come to withdraw our forces. I would redeploy our troops to Kuwait, where we're needed, where we're asked to be, to deal with any international terrorism contingency. But it is my view, Chris, that any kind of rebuilding of America's foreign policy -- dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issue, with nuclear proliferation, with international terrorism -- can only happen after we withdraw from this obsessive, disastrous policy in Iraq.
President Bush really and truly wanted to exercise this option with Libby -- and he's still probably hoping mightily that the judge lets Scooter stay out of jail for another year and a half (while his appeal is being heard) -- so that Bush can pardon him after the 2008 election. But, unfortunately, the judge involved has gained the reputation of being a "long ball" judge (another baseball metaphor pops up!), consistently ruling "by the book," and thereby bucking the modern trend of letting white-collar criminals stay free on appeal. If all predictions are accurate and the judge orders Scooter to jail before the end of the summer, Bush is going to be forced to make this decision a lot more quickly than he would have liked.
I could see Bush, after being told flatly by Republican congressfolks that it was time to pull out, picking up the phone and telling Maliki that it was time for the Iraqi government to ask us to leave. This would give enormous political cover for Bush and the Republicans, and would provide a convenient scapegoat in case the pullout created a bigger disaster: "Hey, they told us to leave, what were we supposed to do?"
But one way or another, in the September/October timeframe, I foresee the end of the Iraq war being written into law by Congress. And that's a real and honest reason for optimism now. We may be at the lowest point of the process -- emotionally -- for the anti-war cause right now. But things are going to be looking up very soon now.
This week's news from Iraq is actually good news, for a change. Good for Democrats in Congress, good for congressional Republicans, good for (assumably) the Iraqis, and good for the seven-tenths of all Americans who want to see an end to American troops in Iraq. Good for almost everyone, right?
Well, not so good for the Bush White House and their "stay the course" echo chamber, but then they've really had their moment in the sunshine already, haven't they?
In other news, Richard Perle seems to be writing comedy for the Washington Post. He writes an op-ed in which he claims that George Tenet personally stole all Saddam's WMD and hid them so that President Bush would look bad. Or something. Like I said, either it was written as a satire, or Perle is convinced he can personally rewrite history. You be the judge.
Rend Al-Rahim's got the best idea I've heard in a long time for some sort of acceptible solution to the whole problem of Iraq: convene a Dayton-type meeting with all the factions, and hammer out an agreement they can all live with. Who knows what the chances of success would be, but like I said, this is the first truly original idea I've heard in a long time, so it deserves to be debated, at the very least.
I wrote an article predicting how the Iraq war would be ended by Democrats in Congress back in January which prognosticated that it wouldn't be until this fall that Republicans would start supporting Democratic efforts to end the war.
David Broder, of the Washington Post, has finally come around to my way of thinking. Since he's seen as being a kind of "dean of the chattering classes" I must admit I feel a bit vindicated.
Last night on PBS' News Hour With Jim Lehrer, Republican Senator (from Texas -- where else?) Kay Bailey Hutchison apparantly does not live on this planet. She was speaking of (in her opinion) the ridiculousness of running a war in Baghdad from Washington, D.C., but the way she put it earns her a Biggest Whopper Of The Week award. She said we can't try to run a war "from 30,000 miles away," putting the Capitol building somewhere between the Earth and the moon (Distance from Washington, D.C. to Baghdad as the "great circle" flies: 6,222 miles; Earth's diameter: 7,900 miles; Distance from Earth to moon: 240,000 miles; Kay Bailey Hutchison's science IQ: ???).
The third option is not a palatable one, because the news media will attempt to portray it as "the Democrats blinked" (the news media's not very good with nuance and grey areas). But it is really the only politically viable strategy at this point. President Bush is, sadly, going to get his escalation.
On the positive side, you have already forced all of Washington into a consensus on a very important point, without even having to vote on it: September is the deadline for the "surge." Democrats, Republicans, and the news media are all in agreement on this one crucial milestone: if there is no marked progress as a result of the surge by September, the troops are going to start coming home.