Now much of the reaction I have heard is how much this undercuts McCain, or helps Obama, or whatever tactical point on the election the writer wants to make. Fine. But what strikes me, is that this is another reminder of why I hate Bush so very much:
He has spent four years warning that timetables are equivalent to surrender, that the bad guys will just mark their calendar, that timetables will cause the whole shooting match to just go to hell, using stark and apocalyptic rhetoric. And now we have a timetable. Now it's not that this is a flip-flop, because I don't actually think it is. This was forced on him by Maliki, and may be an example of the new Bush pragmatism. But now the awful rhetoric about the dangers of timetables is quietly forgotten, down the memory hole. It was a useful club to bash Democrats with while it lasted. The way he used national security policy as a partisan weapon, and the careless way he lied, exaggerated, and shaded the truth to do so, is what will forever tar Bush, I think, as one of the worst and most dangerous president in US history.
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