My guess is that if Bush isn't allowed his last gasp, his "Battle of the Bulge", which was Hitler's last gasp, the Rs will be screaming that on the verge of victory they were denied by the Democrats.

Iraq would have been robbed of democracy, a civil war would have been unleashed, and terrorists turned loose upon a peace-loving (and warmongering) US. All because the Ds decided to acknowledge abject failure.

If the country is so unsafe for "democracy" that the freely elected government has to live in a Green Zone, if towns like Fallujah have to be taken over and over again, if the President of the United States can't safely enter the capital, the addition of more troops will only manage to kill more people and postpone the inevitable.

Any time you're fighting a war where you can't take and hold the land you're doomed. And the insurgents control the countryside, allowing only temporary military superiority and then returning.

All Bush wants to do with his last gasp is to have it denied. Letting him have it is expensive, cruel, and militarily futile. Makes political sense, though.

Arf

PS Remember all those Bush-Cheney statements that the insurgency has shot it's wad, that increased violence was only the flailing of a dying movement?