Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land.

Did you know our failure in Iraq is all the responsibility of General Casey? According to the New York Times that's exactly the case.

Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says

By DAVID E. SANGER, MICHAEL R. GORDON and JOHN F. BURNS
Published: January 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 — President Bush began 2006 assuring the country that he had a “strategy for victory in Iraq” He ended the year closeted with his war cabinet on his ranch trying to devise a new strategy, because the existing one had collapsed.
The original plan, championed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Baghdad, and backed by Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, called for turning over responsibility for security to the Iraqis, shrinking the number of American bases and beginning the gradual withdrawal of American troops. But the plan collided with Iraq’s ferocious unraveling, which took most of Mr. Bush’s war council by surprise.

(Also of a surprise to Bush's "war council" were cellular phones and these new fangled com-put-ers.)

The whole thing leaves me with a whole range of questions the greatest of which is "who the fuck cares?"

It's long past the time anybody who occupied any position within this failed, joke of a presidency and who was able to influence policy should have one more pixel of print thrown at their attempt at covering their backside. The failures in Iraq are not in strategy but in policy. They have absolutely nothing to with whatever strategy Casey and other uniformed officers had to cobble together out of the impossible policy the President and his people put in place. Ultimately that's what the ISG concluded which is why Bush blew off their suggestions.

Iraq is George W. Bush's albatross.

Well surprise, surprise.

So the Iraq Study Group, also known as the Iraq CBA ("Cover Bush's Ass") Group comes to the stunning conclusion that the best option for Iraq is withdrawal of U.S. forces, but refuses to put a timeline on such a withdrawal. We should pull out of Iraq? Thanks for the hard work figuring that out, Captain Obvious.

The longer this drags on the more dangerous the inevitable withdrawal will be. Delaying the withdrawal simply because President Chuckles and the chattering classes don't want to admit they were wrong on the war is a morally wretched position that puts their reputation before our troops' lives.

I don't give a flying figg if George W. Bush goes down in history as the architect of the worst U.S. policy debacle in history. What I want is our covenant with the troops to be honored. Their service is based on trust in the wise stewardship of their leaders. Neither Bush nor the Iraq Study Group are providing that.

Scenes like that pictured below involving REAL marines have got to stop.