Bush’s Secret Plan to End the War

Not to divulge my age unnecessarily, but I do remember Richard Nixon’s “Secret Plan to End the War.” That was 1968. Of course, we are still searching for that plan, but I do have a bit of déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say.

I sense a secret (well, maybe not-so-secret) plan being cooked up inside the Bush White House. First, Bush lets it fly in a Rose Garden press briefing that if the Iraqis want us to leave, we will. Huh? As my occasional sparring partner Tucker Carlson so aptly put it, that is a real change in strategy. The justification for this war was that we were spreading democracy, overthrowing dictators and “combating terrorists over there so we wouldn’t have to over here.” Now it seems that if we are given the pink slip, we’re gone.

Second, Bush is now willing to accept benchmarks and more conditions. If they are not met, well, we may just be ready to begin “Plan B,” whatever that may be.

Third, a withdrawal plan gets floated where the Bush White House explores the notion of cutting the number of troops in half in a year.

The train is leaving the station when it comes to Iraq, and despite all the grumblings about the votes on funding, the Republicans will be the ones stoking the engine to get it moving faster. They will be searching for that Secret Plan — in the halls of Congress or in the bowels of the National Security Council — to unveil before the 2008 elections get going in earnest.