Playing for November

By Libby Froomkin is back from vacation and offers up this soundbite from Bush's Excellent Anbar Adventure that I hadn't seen before. What exactly was President Bush up to yesterday, making a "surprise visit" to a huge American air base in Iraq, praising the ostensible progress there and hinting at a troop reduction if things keep going so well? One answer lies in the remarkably forthright interviews Bush gave author Robert Draper for a new book coming out today. As Jim Rutenberg wrote in Sunday's New York Times, Bush earlier this year explained his Iraq strategy to Draper this way: "I'm playing for October-November." Writes Rutenberg: "That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: 'To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence,' and, he said later, 'stay longer.' Translated to standard English: Back them into a corner. And he's talking about both parties here. He apparently really believes his legacy, or perhaps I should say his God appointed mission, is to start a conflageration in the Middle East that is so big, no one will ever be able to get out of it. Forget impeachment. We need an involuntary commitment to an insane asylum. And by that I mean, what do you do if your president has a nervous breakdown? Really.