The Bush administration’s new Iraq strategy is to tell the American press how hard our troops are working to train Iraqis and how everything is set for the Iraqi government to take over.

Nevermind that there’s absolutely no hard evidence being offered to demonstrate that things actually are getting better. No evidence of a drop in casualties or violence. No evidence of improvements in security, no increases in successfully trained Iraqi police, no economic development, no increases in foreign investment. And there is no functioning Iraqi parliament that’s actually capable of passing laws and making policy decisions.

This is the same old Bush administration strategy; repeat anything enough and people will start to believe it. What’s coming next is scarier.

Six months or a year down the line, when the Iraqi government is still failing to provide security, services, or make policy decisions, the Bush administration is going to throw up its hands and say “Too bad, we tried, but those pesky Iraqis just couldn’t pull it together.” And then they’ll pull out the troops. If you believe what the administration has been saying, it will sound like the screaming failure of this occupation wasn’t their fault. Can you say “cut-and-run,” Mr. Bush? They don’t care about trying to fix the mess they’ve made, or taking responsibility for an ill-concieved invasion; no, they care about saving face and getting out. And the Iraqi people whose lives are actually affected by the fiasco? They aren’t the voters who will elect the next president, so the adminstration doesn’t care.

Probably this will happen sometime before next November, clearing the way for Romney, Giuliani, Gingrich, or McCain to try wash the stain of the war off of the Republican party. What’s coming next, though, is the scariest.

Enough Democrats have just rolled over to pass a war funding bill without a deadline. That’s right, some of the same Democrats who were elected en masse in an election that was a referendum on the Bush administration’s Iraq policy are now following the policy of that same administration. An administration with an approval rating of less than 30%. Shame on you for defecting. And shame on the Democratic leadership for not preventing these defections. Shame, shame, shame.