Wrong Answer, Wrong Question

After a week filled with BS from General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, and most of all George W. Bush the refrain from the NY Times, along with most everyone else opposed to continuing the war in Iraq remains critical:

Mr. Bush has no strategy to end his disastrous war and no strategy for containing the chaos he unleashed.

After all this time, we need to consider another possibility. George Bush, and certainly Dick Cheyney are not merely kicking the war down the road for the next President so solve, they are actively, consciously and deliberately creating enough chaos to require a permanent presence.

Why else would we be building the largest US embassy anywhere in the world (at $600 million bucks)?

Why else would the current chaos be the argument for continued American presence but that Iraqi stabilization would make it safe enough for a continued American presence?

Why else do George Bush and the other war supporters not discuss any time beyond the next six months?

Bush has succeeded in framing the debate as stay or retreat and fail. His recent flawed reference to Korea was no accident. We've been there more than a half-century.

The far better frame is permanent or limited presence. The far better frame is that the Bush Administration has so screwed things up that there are no good options. But what we do know for certain two things.

First, the majority of Americans and Iraqis want the US to leave Iraq soon. An even larger majority want the US to leave Iraq. Period.

Second, and more important, whichever of the bad options we now choose, we cannot leave the choice to those whose judgment and intents are so flawed, so malign so get us into the dangerous, damaging debacle we're now in.