Dr. Bushlove, Or How I Learned to Stop Hedging and Love Iraq Timetables

We've been hearing all about timetables to leave Iraq for months now, and it looks like Bush will soon have yet another opportunity to veto a bill with an Iraq timetable.

Now, as I've said elsewhere, I don't know much about anything, but from a purely pragmatic POV, I've kind of been wondering why Bush would be against a timetable in the first place. Don't know why he wouldn't have come up with it himself. It would have given him a way to save face.

The USA is not going to stop violence in Iraq by staying. That should be fairly clear by now. We don't have enough troops, we don't have enough money, and we don't have public support for the war. If you set a timetable for withdrawal, then that accomplishes a few things that the Republicans would want:

• The Iraqi government suddenly becomes in charge of getting ready for their own country's security
• US troops get to leave in the foreseeable future. That has to help troop morale, doesn't it?
• US hawks will get to say that we didn't lose -- we just set a timetable and folowed it
• Republicans get to claim that they helped stop the war
• The US public will start to feel better about the war right away, possibly helping the next Republican candidate for President

Bush's people have been trying to spin this war since the beginning, so why couldn't they be able to spin a timetable this way?