Bush: "We're Not Winning"
Okay, okay, Bush actually used the open-ended copout line, "We're not winning, we're not losing" but as today's Washington Post article says, it's certainly a far cry from Bush's pre-election thumpin' line "Absolutely we're winning!"
But don't take Bush's turnaround as a sign he's going to give up. Oh no, that is for other president's to do for him, preferably a Democratic one. The extra troop surge is just going to be another delaying tactic. I'll present TPM reader MD's likely scenario of what's going to happen in full:
It hit me the other day that what the surge is going to accomplish for Bush and Cheney is to take them through these next two years. By the time they can claim to have the extra troops in Bagdhad it's gonna be May or June. They'll be there a few months till everyone has to admit that it isn't working (though in the interim I would predict the first really horrendous event in which our troops suffer a big loss, like 200 men in one blast), then it will be the end of 2007 and the argument will be about whether we should remove some of the surge troops. That will take a few months, at least, and we'll be in the throes of a presidential election. Bush won't want to do anything too "political" at that point, of course, so he'll happily leave it to the new prez to make shitcakes out of shit. And Bush and Cheney will spin it for all it's worth for the rest of their lives...