...but now I'm feeling nostalgic for the Reagan years, when the conniving conservatives were actually halfway competent.

Bush will ignore pretty much everything in the report except whatever ceremonial window-dressing he has to perform while making a sour face like when he fired Donald Rumsfeld.

It looks like the ISG has suggested a way forward that could turn out to be the least bad option. However, let's be clear about this, their report is all about fixing America's problem and not Iraq's.

Bush may yet reject the most sensible parts of the report (dialogue with Iran, Syria, focus on Israel/Palestine), and if he does, what will we be left with? A country smashed to pieces, countless dead Iraqis and turmoil in the region.

The ISG says that the report is not a "magic formula that will solve the problems of Iraq". Too right.

Our grief in Iraq is compounded by our complete inability to see the situation in its totality. Until now, all the talk is about it as a military problem, which it has not been since Saddam's statue fell, and has completely failed to consider how Iraqis feel about their country and our being there.

Bear in mind, we have no legal right to be there at all, the pretenses for such presence having been long since demolished as lies, and the only reason we persist is out of a sense of obligation to the Iraqis to make things better, and also to prevent our national interest from being screwed up any worse than it already has been.

Guess what. The insurgency was originally about our being there. They consider themselves patriots for trying to expel the crusaders (using Bush's word from his 9/11 speech) once again, as they had the Brits 60 years ago. Yet we stumbled along for years mumbling in disbelief, "Why are they shooting at us? Duh." We knew by then most of the insurgents, 90%, were not Al Qaeda. But we just could not figure it out.

And now comes the Iraq Study Group Report. It contains the word "occupation" five times, and "occupiers" not at all. Two of those times are references to the World War II service of panel members. One quotes a radical Muslim cleric. Only two, in sentence fragements, touch on the resentment of Iraqis for our being there. And yet it is perhaps the single most salient fact in our present predicament.

So I am not optimistic that what needs to be done will be done: Bringing as much pressure and incentive as we still can muster to get the Shiites to make appropriate concessions to the Sunnis, IN EXCHANGE FOR US COMMITTING TO A WITHDRAWAL TIMETABLE, which is what the Sunnis want in order to stop shooting.

Failing that deal, it will be misery and quagmire until a very bitter end, and in the next generation many old, gray men will snarl about the loss there the way they do about Vietnam.

A telling piece about this news for me was when Brian Williams mentioned on NBC News last night that it will be 'weeks before Bush makes a decision' about the report's recommendations.

I'd hate to be one of the 'n' Americans now in Iraq who will have to pay the ultimate cost of Bush taking his sweet time deciding.

But, I guess being the decider affords you that luxury of time that not all Americans can enjoy.

Some people will accept just about any lie, rather than admitting a mistake.

Prior to intervention, Islamic extremists were killing Jews and Americans.

The amazing thing is, that it's possible to pack so many absurdities and outright lies into a single sentence.

• "Intervention" - this was not an intervention, but an unprovoked war of aggression.
• Iraq posed no danger to America before it was invaded.
• Islamic extremists were operating from Afghanistan, not from Iraq. There was no necessary connection between Afghanistans attack on the US, and the attack of the US on Iraq.
• To attribute alleged improvements in security to the attack on Iraq rather than the retaliation against Afghanistan is absurd. But...
• The situation in Israel is not improved in any way. If anything it's worse than it was before the attack on Iraq. There are still Jews being killed there.
• There are Americans being killed in Iraq currently.

Depends on how you define victory.

Victory - achieving the goals which drove the military action.

Defeat - redefining victory until you can claim you've won, no matter how absurd the logic.

There may be a few cosmetic changes but Bush is bound and determined to stay the course. The guy is dumb. He simply wants to pass this disaster off on the next president so he isn't the one who 'cut and ran.' There is a serious pattern in Bush's behavior that can't be ignored. He has a major phony tough guy image of himself. We saw this over the summer with him pushing Israel to attack Lebanon. He won't ever back down because he would feel that it would make him look weak. Americans troops will continue to die because of Bush's arrogence. It really is that simple.

Bush will change when his father forces him to change. End of story.

Will Bush listen to reason? What makes Bush tick? What are the family dynamics behind James Baker's reappearance? Will Congress have any influence on Bush? Bush Bush Bush Bush Bush.

In a parliamentary system, i.e. the kind in use in some form in every other advanced nation, we wouldn't have to bother with any of those questions. Bush's party would have removed him as leader, or the legislature would have voted "no confidence" and forced an election in which he would have been defeated and sent back into the minority (or the backbenches, or retirement).

Instead, it was left to the public to register no confidence. But the public could overturn the party control of the legislature (and did) without touching Bush directly -- a formula for two years of even more incoherent policy-making.

I yield to no one in my admiration of James Madison, but he knew only the best practices of 1787, not the present. And he and his colleagues had no experience governing a superpower capable of causing disasters on a global scale. We are now paying the price.