Bush to announce limited troop pullout after Petraeus tells Congress the end is not in sight

Bush, in an attempt to stifle the critical rage that surrounds his intransigence over the Iraq war, is to announce a reduction in troop levels in that country of 30,000 by August of next year.

George Bush will tell America tomorrow night that he plans a limited withdrawal of 30,000 troops from Iraq by August 2008, returning strength to the level early this year of 130,000 and endorsing the reduction proposed by General David Petraeus, according to White House officials.

No-one should be under any doubt that this is nothing other than an attempt to drag out the day when a full withdrawal takes place and a further attempt by Bush to place the failures of his Iraq policy around the neck of whoever succeeds him.

Asked whether he could foresee a day when all US forces would be withdrawn from Iraq, Gen Petraeus said: "I would be doing a disservice to our soldiers if I tried to lay out a specific timeline at this point that took us all the way out."

Later he admitted that if there had been no change in the war a year from now it would be difficult to justify keeping US troops in Iraq. "I would have to think very very very hard," he said. He also declined to say whether he thought the war had made America safer.

Bush has no plan for victory, the only plan he has is to make sure that the final withdrawal is made on someone else's watch so that he can claim that, had he still been in power, he would have fought on.

It's spineless, dishonest and immoral.

The truth is that Bush never had any plan. He unleashed the military and hoped that they, themselves, would conjure up victory for him and that all he had to do was to continue to offer his unconditional support.

If one reads Bob Woodward's "State of Denial" one can see quite clearly that Bush sees his role as that of a cheerleader, and that he thinks Vietnam was lost because America somehow lost her nerve. So he has determined that he will not lose his and he presumes that victory will, somehow, naturally flow from him maintaining that position.

When victory is not forthcoming, he seems to believe that he simply has to strengthen his resolve.

Thousands and thousands of Iraqis and Americans will die because this man lacks the good grace to admit that he has been defeated.

America's man in Baghdad was similarly unable to offer reassurances, saying he could not guarantee the government in Baghdad would achieve political reconciliation before Mr Bush left office in January 2009. "I could not put a timeline on it or a target date," Mr Crocker said.

Their refusal to guarantee that the Bush administration's strategy would lead to meaningful gains comes at a time when even Republicans who supported the war are having trouble justifying it to voters. As Gen Petraeus began his testimony yesterday, a white-haired man in a summer suit rose to his feet and shouted: "Hundreds and thousands of people dead, isn't that enough for your blood thirst?"

This administration cares little for how many people are dying in Iraq. Indeed, when it comes to the Iraqis, they don't even bother to count them. It's a startling concept, that you claim to be "liberating" people and yet you don't even care how many of them you kill in the process.

And yet that is the reality of Bush's supposed "liberation" of Iraq.

Senators flatly demanded to know if America was stuck in a futile war. "Are we going to continue to invest blood and treasure at the same rate we're doing now? For what?" asked Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican who has opposed the war.

For what? Well, it must continue so that Bush can pass the failure onto someone else, there really is no more moral reason than that for the wars continuation.

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Tags: Bush, Iraq war, Petraeus, surge