Is there any reason to think that the White House wouldn't manipulate war tactics now for political reasons, too?

Not really. This is a political war, by that I mean that our Fearless Leader felt the need to be a "War President", so he and his coterie looked around for a target of opportunity, manufactured a causus bellum, and pulled the trigger. The entire adventure has been manipulated for political advantage from the get-go.

As the war becomes more and mor unpopular, the stunts become more and more desperate as Junior looks for the silver bullet that will restore his popularity back to its September 15, 2001 level. Unfortunately for him (and us) all he's got is a cap gun.

I think that we become a dictatorship when a presidential spokesdroid says:

"The president has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way."

and we don't see it decried on the front page of every respectable newspaper (Washingtom Times doesn't count) the next day and Congress doesn't do or say diddly about it. I mean shades of Henry Kissenger and his famous

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

just substitute "Congress" for "Chilean voter" and start looking for the nearest football stadium.

So I guess the answer to pageiger's questopn would be "yesterday".

I realize the Tony Snow is just a flack on loan from Faux, but he doesn't say anything that isn't cleared. That was a trial balloon that he launched on Monday and damn few people have bothered to shoot at it.

The sad thing for me is that my two year old will have to fight this battle when he is an adult because we don't want to take the responsibility now.

Joe, a lot of people's kids had to go to Iraq due to fight your tin god's war. Did you notice that none of them were his, or any other top Republican's, kids? More than 3,000 of those "other people's kids" aren't going to be coming home, they were pushed into the maw of the "War President's" Moloch.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret Joe, you'll probably pick up on this as you get older, but I'll give you the crash course. My sons are all in their 20s now but you wanna know something - I still see the two-year olds they used to be just about every day. I betcha I'll see those two year-olds for the rest of my life. Not a bad thing at all.

I imagine that each and every one of those 3,000 + Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen is still somebody's two year-old, too. More of "somebody else's two years-olds" won't becoming home until George W. Bush screws up his courage enough to say "I Fucked Up" to the rest of the world and asks for their help to hammer out a comprehensive political solution to the problems in the Mideast. I don't think that this will ever happen.

Oh, and by the way Joe, what makes you think that the permawar that Bush just had to have will be over by the time your little two year-old gets old enough for it? This Recrudescent Crusade has a long time to run yet and like the last one, there is no military solution.

"If they fail to do these things, then it's incumbent on the administration and incumbent on me to recommend looking at whether this is the right strategy."

Boy, I just love it when a plan has strong, unambiguous metrics to allow us to check on its status and the executives responsible fror the plan's execution have concrete remediation strategies to roll out if things start to go awry.

Note that he didn't say that he actually would recommend re-evaluating this "strategy", much less even suggest that he would recommend a change if it's not working, and he didn't even offer a glimmer of hope that Junior would actually accept the recommendation.

Gee, these guys really do run the government like a business, just like they promised. Unfortunately their business model was written by the same guys who wrote Enron's and Global Crossing's. I know the job that I want in this misadministration. I want to be that guy they put in charge of "lessons learned". Obviously, he gets to just phone it in.