Bush Takes Over

Tonight marks the moment when President George Bush takes over the Iraq war. Up till now he's supposedly deferred to the professionals, his generals, but he's parting company with them over his latest war plan that will see about 20,000 more US troops headed to Iraq.

It's not as though the general staff is about to rise up en masse and resign in protest. No, they've decided to pretty much just do as they're told which, after all, is a soldier's paramount duty. Yet it means something when your commanders in the field turn down the prospect of more troops.

Bush aides have emphasized that their boss's plan is very complex and will have to be unveiled in stages. In other words, part of it gets presented to the American people tonight, more of it is put forward when Bush addresses US troops tomorrow and so on. Military history shows that complex strategies rarely succeed because they are full of interdependent steps in which a failure or setback in one can ripple through all the others.

Now, as the fourth anniversary of this debacle approaches, the Commander in Chief is going to admit what he has so steadfastly denied all along - that the military force sent to Iraq was much too small. The invasion force was probably a third, certainly not more than half in number what was necessary to occupy and secure Iraq - just like General Shinseki told them before he was driven out of his job.

Four years of gross incompetence. Now he thinks he's going to turn that around by tossing in 20,000 more troops and telling the inept and compromised Maliki government to pick up its socks. Good luck with that, George. It's all your war now but, then again, it always was.