The War is over

But Frank Rich tells us Mr Bush is like that Japanese soldier on an island for 50 years after the end of WWII, he doesn't know it's over. Go read the entire commentary but I'll give you the last two paragraphs here.

WHAT lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.

Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.

As we told you below the reason for invading Iraq has been downgraded from creating a democracy to creating an Islamic republic, allied with the Islamic republic next door. In spite of what Mr Bush may say there are those in the administration who know it's time to get out and the plans are in place to do just that.