Danger in the Summer Moon Above

It seems that Frank Rich is always good for a Sunday if I haven't had the opportunity to delve into the recent news as deeply as I'd like. And today he doesn't disappoint. He's back on the Iraq beat with "They'll Break the Bad News on 9/11."

By this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House's top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam's aluminum tubes. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq - the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America - had officially begun.

America wasn't paying close enough attention then. We can't afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.

The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the "surge" was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we'd have "a pretty good feel" whether his policy "made sense." On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a "snapshot" of progress in Iraq. "Snapshot," of course, means "Never mind!"

The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called "the consequences" and General Petraeus "the implications" of any alternative "courses of action" to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September "snapshot" of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that "the consequences" of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).

That's becoming more and more apparent. There's going to be no plan to pull back on the surge if it's discovered in September that it's not working. It'll be "almost working," need just a little more time, or (and this has been my favorite so far) not quite fully under way yet. Bush plans on staying as long as he can (and unless Dems put their foot down, he can until mid-January of 2009). The wild card is how desperate will the Repubs get to avoid another election calamity. Will they break with the Pres? They claim they will, but they always seem to cave in the end. And they're doing nothing to step in on the whole Iraqi situation. To a large degree, they're following the Prez's lead on September. The September bandwagon was starting to leave without him, but he jumped on it pretty early. John Warner is getting a lot of play as the Senator who can speak the truth to Bush, but will he?

As General [William] Odom says, the endgame will start "when a senior senator from the president's party says no," much as William Fulbright did to L.B.J. during Vietnam. That's why in Washington this fall, eyes will turn once again to John Warner, the senior Republican with the clout to give political cover to other members of his party who want to leave Iraq before they're forced to evacuate Congress. In September, it will be nearly a year since Mr. Warner said that Iraq was "drifting sideways" and that action would have to be taken "if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function."

Mr. Warner has also signaled his regret that he was not more outspoken during Vietnam. "We kept surging in those years," he told The Washington Post in January, as the Iraq surge began. "It didn't work." Surely he must recognize that his moment for speaking out about this war is overdue. Without him, the Democrats don't have the votes to force the president's hand. With him, it's a slam dunk. The best way to honor the sixth anniversary of 9/11 will be to at last disarm a president who continues to squander countless lives in the names of those voiceless American dead.

The key sentence in that quote is: "Surely he must recognize that his moment for speaking out about this war is overdue." Surely he must. And yet, he hasn't done anything. But keep those fingers crossed!