Exit Strategery

It's good policy and possibly bad politics: get out of Iraq. Bush made it clear that, while U.S. troops will remain to keep the peace, Iraqis will start taking control of their own country on June 30th.

We have set a deadline of June 30th. It is important that we meet that deadline....Were the coalition to step back from the June 30th pledge, many Iraqis would question our intentions and feel their hopes betrayed....We will not step back from our pledge. On June 30th, Iraqi sovereignty will be placed in Iraqi hands...On June 30th, when the flag of a free Iraq is raised, Iraqi officials will assume full responsibility for the ministries of government.

Bush wants people to remember the date June 30th. They will. However, many of us also read into this a boldfaced subtext: "We'll leave Iraq on June 30th no matter what the conditions are". Bush wouldn't make this speech unless he'd counted the costs, and calculated (with the help of Karl Rove, no doubt) that the cost of staying there was higher than the cost of throwing the Iraqi Governing Council to the sharks.

Of course, U.S. troops will remain until Rumsfeld deems Iraq capable of controlling potential factions, fundamentalists, and rebels. When that will be, no one knows. And whether the U.S. would respect the request of a sovereign Iraqi government to pack up and go home before that time is also unknown. What is known is that Bush is in it for the long haul, and he's staked his reelection to the popularity and perception of success of a difficult foreign war.