Bush Resisting?

Immediate signs that President Bush and members of his administration may still see "stay the course" as the proper option:

Bush Calls Iraq Report One Among Many Ideas

Congress seemed eager yesterday to embrace the new Baker-Hamilton report as a possible way out of the morass in Iraq, while the White House is increasingly insistent that the document is but one of several suggestions President Bush will review as he ponders changes to a policy widely seen as not working in Iraq.

The administration seems to have distanced itself from the commission in recent weeks. White House officials were never wildly enthusiastic about a group co-chaired by a key figure, Baker, from the administration of the president's father. But there was hope that it might be a useful vehicle to provide political cover to do what the White House was interested in doing anyway.

In his public comments, Bush has gone from embracing the upcoming report to casting it as merely one data point among many. His decision to authorize parallel internal administration reviews became a strategy to keep the Iraq Study Group from becoming the primary author of a course change that the president would be pressured to accept -- much as what happened with the Sept. 11 commission.

"It's very hard for me to, you know, prejudice one report over another," Bush said in an interview Monday with Fox News Channel. "They're all important."

It appears that the Pilgrim's earlier negativity regarding the ISG Report was not unduly negative. If the administration doesn't take the ideas of the ISG Report and make them into a reality that improves our situation in Iraq, then the report is simply a waste of paper.

So many people have seemingly invested so much hope in this report. They seem to have forgotten that George W. Bush is still President. The current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is simply unwilling to admit the horrible mistake he has made.

GP