Defense Secretary Robert Gates slipped into Iraq Thursday to warn Iraqi leaders that the U.S. commitment to a military buildup there is not open-ended.Several odd and newsworthy things in this story:
Gates said the political tumult in Washington over financing the military presence in Iraq shows that both the American public and the Bush administration are running out of patience with the war.
1. Our very own Bush-appointed Defense Secretary is publicly telling the tuhrerists exactly what Bush claims they want to hear - that if they just wait long enough, the Bush administration will lose patience, IS LOSING patience already, and will leave.
2. Contrary to Bush's assertion that it is dangerous and reckless for Democrats to demand a timetable for our eventual withdrawal from Iraq, Gates is now saying that the Democrats' approach is the best approach for getting the Iraqis to finally stand up and defend themselves. Bush is criticizing the Democrats and Gates is using their proposal to do good in Iraq. So which one is, is the Democratic proposal dangerous or helpful?
3. Even more interesting, Gates is claiming credit for the Democrats' position, claiming incredibly that the Democrats' demand that we set a timetable somehow shows that the Bush administration is "running out of patience with the war." That's an outright lie. The Democrats are losing patience, the American public is losing patience, but the tumult over funding that Gates is talking about shows that the administration isn't losing any patience at all - the administration wants (well wanted up until Gates just spoke) an open-ended commitment in Iraq.
So who is right, Bush or Gates? Are we going to stay in Iraq until the job gets done, as Bush claims, even if it takes forever, or are we going to pull out at a certain date, whether we win or not, simply because we will have lost patience, as the Secretary of Defense now claims?
