A*hole and his team sent the troops over to Iraq in the first place. We were all thinking it......

The idea that maybe Bush wanted to "play hardball" all the way to mid-May so that he could blame the 3 month troop extension on the Democrats assumes that the Bush administration has the capability to plan that far in advance.

From what we've seen so far, the White House only knows the short game: Say... a week to ten days, if that.

...Bush is using the troops as a political wedge against congress. I wonder how the troops feel about being caught in the middle. Only this time it's between their fearless leader, oh, excuse me, their commander-in-chief, and congress.

No, sdemont1, this play is just the commander-and-chimp. You can't try the "fair and balanced" thing with this.

Has anyone ever thought to say that the whole reason Bush and Co. are in this jam over funding is that they consistently didn't budget for it in the annual appropriations bill? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if they had the intellectual and budgetary honesty to ask for an entire years worth of funding than we wouldn't be having this "debate" in April '07. Kinda Poetic Justice if you ask me.

While this is a loaded political issue, the fact that these extensions hit the press before the word is disseminated via the chain of command in the field causes morale problems. The BushCo line that discussions or dissent at home hurts morale is cr@p, but the extension case is a double whammy. When your tour is almost done, you want to come home. Extending hurts. Finding out you are extended via an AP headline or worse yet, your family, makes you feel like your immediate chain of command is either ill-informed or doesn't care -- either of which does sour morale. I've been subjected to Rumsfeld and Gates, and based on that experience, I'd say Gates deserves the benefit of the doubt here while Rummy would not.

anyone who thinks these criminals in the White House will have any scruples whatever about blaming the dems for this GOP war, and White House conduct of it, hasn't been paying attention.

Bush and Cheney would not hesitate to tell the Pentagon to quit sending body armor to the troops, and when more are killed, blame THAT on the dems too.

These guys are shameless murderers who are desperate to blame their incompetence on anyone who will stand still long enough to take it.

I'm quite sure Bush is ready to take the most drastic measures, and put the troops he has ordered into battle into the worst kind of circumstances, just so he can offload the blame onto the dems. If the dems have any brains at all, they'll start making it clear just who the traitors are. I hope they start right. now.

Bush and Cheney have only begun this particular exercise in treasonous sleaze. Just watch. It's gonna get a LOT worse.

it would have been done much sooner than it was under the past two Republican lead Congressional sessions.

... is that it finally means that political reality has hit this administration.

2 years ago, or even 1 year ago, they still be able to blame it on the Democrats, and the media would just swallow it whole, logic be damned.

The media are still eating a lot of administration bullpuck, but they're not just eating everything that's given to them.

So this signals a very welcome change: the White House can't just claim reality is whatever they want any more.

Some very thoughtless person decided to start a war with Iraq, destablize the entire world, and then play politics with our troops. And then some thoughless voters extended his tour for four years.

I would love to see an in-depth article on Salon about how troop increases are largely meaningless, since many of the troops over there are ensconced in FOBs and rarely go out for action anyway. The only story I've seen on the "Fobbits" is one on the Buffalo site The Beast (http://www.buffalobeast.com/113/Power%20Surge.htm). If there is truth to this, it could do with Salon's senior coverage and far-ranging voice to add it to the national discussion.

to call them on this one. Bush has bold-faced lied to the american electorate yet once again. How can the media put up with this? Imus rants and is fired, Bush rants, lies, and people die.

Impeach this pathological liar. People are dying for Christ's sake.

You were right to start that paragraph, "We're just guessing here..." because we don't know, but what you're suggesting makes sense. It seemed too bizarre even for Bush to suggest that a delay in the bill would mean extended deployments. Loss of funding would mean withdrawals. Democrats were reining in the mission, not extending it. Delays would mean shifting money like prior years. How his statements connected just made no sense. Now it does. He was going to frame the issue by saying delaying the bill or including withdrawal dates would mean extensions, and then he would extend. They must have been talking about such a broad extension a long time, so when they wrote Bush's speech, they knew this was coming up. Had to. I can't believe the White House would be in the dark about something like that. It's still not proven, but if I can make a guess, whoever leaked was one of those who knew and couldn't stand to watch it happen.

There's a phalanx of Americans that know that Bush is trying to push buttons to get his way in Iraq. Our only hope is that the backbone of the Dems, Indepedants and those oh so few Republicans to stand their ground and honor the wishes of the American people.

Will that stand happen? Bets anyone?

It seemed odd that the three month extension was announced prior to briefing the troops. It also seemed odd that it had no political content attached to it. It made me wonder if Gates had his own agenda and was walking outside the politically lockstep Bush administration.

Now I learn that the extension, which highlights a broken military and more Bush/Cheney incompetence, was leaked before it could be tuned up in the GOP propaganda shop.

I absolutely love it. It makes me laugh.

The briefing to the troops should be,"Sorry guys that we have to increase the chance of your tired asses' dying by 25% on this rotation but we've screwed this occupation thing up from the beginning and well, we're sorry."

The result of the leak appears to be the odd victory for truth over the Soviet style propaganda apparatus pronouncement we have come to expect from 'reality central', i.e. the White House.

"It's all the fault of the people that are trying to bring you back home," they could have said.