if you want a good example of the basic dishonesty behind the surge strategy, compare bush's speech announcing the surge last january with his address last night.
in the january speech there was a lot of talk about holding the iraqi government accountable. it talked about how for the strategy to succeed certain benchmarks had to be met. and the president said "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced."
just before that he said "I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people -- and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people."
so what happened? bush barely mentioned the benchmarks in his speech last night. the white house previously promised and which it released with the speech shows that there as been "satisfactory progress" towards attaining 8 of the 18 benchmarks, and "unsatisfactory progress" for the rest. but when the surge was first announced, bush didn't talk about "satisfactory progress" towards meeting the benchmarks, he said that "for the strategy to succeed certain benchmarks had to be met." in other words, some of those 8 "successes" are actually failures if you grade them on the scale set by president bush on january 10, 2007. the GAO's report released last week found that only 3 of the 18 benchmarks were actually met.
in any case, last january bush claims he told the iraqi government that it must meet all of the benchmarks and warned maliki that "America's commitment is not open-ended." so since even the white house reports that there wasn't even satisfactory progress towards achieving more than half of the benchmarks, bush announces that america's commitment to iraq will be open-ended, or as he put it to extend "beyond my presidency". meanwhile, bush's aids are talking about "the korea model", referencing the american military presence in south korea that has lasted for the past half century and will probably extend through the rest of my lifetime. it doesn't get any more open-ended than that.
in short, last january, bush set certain benchmarks, said they must be met and proclaimed that the u.s. will not be in iraq forever, especially if the benchmarks weren't met. last night, bush barely mentioned the benchmarks, which were mostly unmet, and announced to the world that the u.s. has no intention of leaving ever.
so much for accountability.
