Prometheus 6

It was the White House and the Iraqi government, not Congress, that first proposed the benchmarks for Iraq that are now producing failing grades, a provenance that raises questions about why the administration is declaring now that the government’s performance is not the best measure of change.

The New York Times says "President Bush is proposing a new gauge, by focusing on new American alliances with the tribes and local groups that Washington once feared would tear the country apart. That shift in emphasis was implicit in Mr. Bush’s decision to bypass Baghdad on his eight-hour trip to Iraq, stopping instead in Anbar Province, once the heart of an anti-American Sunni insurgency."

I suggest Democrats simply not respond to this implied change. Make the White House explicitly repudiate its own suggestion and make it be clear about why this change is necessary.

The Republican Congress let Bush move the goal posts over and over. I understand the Democratic Congress can't turn on a dime, but they MUST start holding the Bushistas accountable and in part that means holding them to agreed upon standards BEFORE changing the standards.