Bush: I Agree With Every Part of the ISG Report, Except The Parts About Withdrawing/Surrendering and Negotiating With Syria and Iran

Good news -- he's happy-talking the report but ignoring the parts that are giving Tim Russert fossilized wood (agate boners, for those interested in paleontology).

President Bush moved quickly on Thursday to distance himself from the central recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group: pulling back all combat brigades over the next 15 months and direct talks with Iran and Syria.

One day after the independent panel rocked Washington with its bleak assessment of conditions in Iraq, Mr. Bush met at the White House with his closest ally in the war, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. The president said afterward that the United States needs “a new approach” in Iraq and that he would ‘’seriously consider” the report, but was unlikely to accept all of its recommendations.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the co-chairmen of the panel, James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, called on Congress to exert pressure on Mr. Bush to accept the report in its entirety. Mr. Baker told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the White House should not treat the report “like a fruit salad,” while Mr. Hamilton complained that Congress had been ‘’extremely timid” in overseeing the war.

Oh, eat me, hacks. It's a bunch of nonsense. Half of what you recommend is already being done, the other half of the recommendations have tried to be done, unsuccessfully so far, and the other other half is just fruitbat crazy.

So, Jonah Goldberg is right: Bush likes the report, because what he reads when he sees it is "stay the course."

posted by Ace at 10:15 AM

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