Bush is about to reject Baker's Report.

The Bush regime looks like it is gearing up to reject the Baker Report by planning to send a further 20,000 troops to Iraq and ruling out any talks with Syria and Iran. The Decider has ruled out making any decision until early next year, but the signs are already ominous:

In a meeting with editors at the Washington Post she [Rice] said that a deal for Syrian and Iranian cooperation on Iraq would come at too high a price. Instead, she argued, Damascus and Tehran may be moved to try to improve the situation in Iraq by their own self-interest. "You have to ask if Iran and Syria have, in fact, decided that it's in their interest to have an Iraq that is more stable than the one now," she said. "I assume they'll act. I assume they'll do it. And that we aren't the ones who have to tell them to do it."

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Bush administration was exploring the possibility of sending 20,000 additional troops to Iraq to stabilise Baghdad and accelerate the training of the Iraqi army. The McClatchy news service quoted US officials as saying the administration was considering a short-term deployment of as many as 40,000 more soldiers and marines in Baghdad.

Such moves defy public opinion, with a new poll for National Public Radio yesterday showing nearly two-thirds of Americans favouring a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in early 2007 despite the threat to Iraqi stability.

This also runs counter to advice given by the US army's most senior general:

General Peter Schoomaker warned Congress on Thursday that US forces were dangerously over-stretched. "The army is incapable of generating and sustaining the required forces to wage the global war on terror without its components - active, guard and reserve - surging together," he told a commission of Congress.

He called for an expansion of the force by 7,000 troops a year, and the lifting of restrictions on the mandatory call-up of National Guard and reservists. "Without recurrent access to the reserve components, through remobilisation, we will break the active component," he warned.

The general also opposes the idea of a temporary increase in troops. "We should not surge without a purpose, and that purpose should be measurable and get us something," he told reporters later.

Unlike most left wing sites I have welcomed the Baker Report as I thought it attempted to give Bush a face saving way out of the dilemma he has skewed himself on. It did not call for an immediate withdrawal, which was the reason most left wingers opposed it, but I though it unrealistic to expect Baker to make such a call.

He was attempting to give Bush a way to declare victory and get out.

Bush now appears to be rejecting that opportunity. Which is simply bizarre. Perhaps Bush really believes that actual "victory" can be achieved. Or perhaps he is so determined to avoid the defeat that he has manufactured for himself that he simply hopes to pass the problem on to his successor.

One thing is clear, the Iraq war is lost. There is no brave new democracy about to spring up in the Middle East, harbouring in a new age setting an example to Iraq's neighbours. Even as I type this I shudder at the unrealistic ambitions the Bushites set themselves.

However, Bush seems determined to continue down this suicidal path, cheered on by the more extreme fringes of the right wing.

There was a time when the Bushites could claim that they possessed some sort of popular support, when the public believed the lies they peddled before the Iraq war. That time is long gone and the public have now sickened of the Iraq war and it's cost both financially and in terms of human lives.

But Bush has always operated from a post Vietnam outlook, believing that victory will come if only the US has the courage to stick to the task. It's an insane proposition as Baker has attempted to point out.

But Bush and Cheney seem determined to ignore the friends of Bush's father, they seem Hell bent on rushing towards their unattainable goal.

The cost to the US of their stubbornness is incalculable. The loss of American prestige is already huge. Bush set out with the belief that the world's most powerful nation could do as it pleased. In doing so he revealed, not the power of the American Empire, but it's limitations.

The behaviour of Iran and Hizbullah is only the first sign that the US is not feared the way it once was. Baker sought to draw a line under this debacle, he sought to save face for the US.

Bush is behaving like a demented poker player willing to lose all rather than cut his losses. As old fashioned Conservatives like Baker and Bush's father now find their advice ignored, the extremism of Bush's regime is further exposed. These people are not Conservatives, they are ideologues.

And their ideology has resulted in a catastrophic loss of American prestige in the world. Someone has to save them from themselves. Baker attempted to do so and it looks like he's about to be ignored.

Pelosi needs to rethink her decision to oppose impeachment, for the sake of the country.

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tag: Bush, Iraq war, "Stay the course", Baker report, Dick Cheney, James T Baker