Admittedly this is just a quickie to remind myself and others that Bush has very little interest in anything resembling compromise, bipartisanship, or fixing his own goddamn mess. In a recent statement concerning Iraq:

“There’s one thing I’m not going to do, I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete,” he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week. “We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.”

The “mission” appears to be creating a completely stable Iraq. Now, this is a noble goal and one I think most of us support on principle. However, there is the little problem of whether or not we can actually do this, but that seems to be largely ignored by our Mighty Leader.

It would also be far easier to complete this mission (apparently completing is different than accomplishing) if Bush had, say, a remote understanding of what’s going on in the country.

Earlier Tuesday, Bush blamed the escalating bloodshed in Iraq on an al Qaeda plot to stoke cycles of sectarian revenge, and refused to debate whether the country has fallen into civil war.

…

“No question it’s tough, no question about it,” Bush said at a news conference with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. “There’s a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of these attacks by al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal.”

Folks, this is why there is no progress. Bush refuses to discuss even the possibility that there is a civil war. He has completely blocked that off in his mind and any debate about Iraq must be made as though that’s not within the realm of possibility. It would be like trying to rebuild New Orleans without allowing anyone to talk about the potential for future hurricanes.

How Bush can say these things with a straight face, I don’t think I’ll ever understand.