Everybody Back to Work!

Well, I guess that was the summer. Put your white dinner jacket back into mothballs. It's time to get back to work.

In keeping with the whole "back to school" nature of the season, Congress is back in session. We've been waiting for September for quite some time, as that's when the Republicans decided they were going to tell the Prez that they mean business on Iraq. They're waiting for General Petraeus to give them the "straight scoop" of what's going on in Iraq, and then they're going to tell the Prez that he has to face the music.

I know, you're sitting there wondering why I'm even bothering to write about this, because we can see from miles away how it's all going to turn out. To be completely honest, I'm wondering why I'm bothering to write about it, too. Petraeus is already saying things are going swimmingly in Iraq. The Prez is going to say we need to stay the course. The Republicans in Congress will argue that now things seem to be turning around, it would be foolish to cut and run. And the Democrats are going to cave.

Just to make sure, the administration is throwing a bone to the Dems. After he snuck into Iraq, where he remained in the comfort of the most heavily fortified air base in the country, he suggested that conditions might be right to reduce the number of troops in Iraq. Petraeus and other military leaders have been even more frank, acknowledging that current conditions are putting too great a strain on the military and we'll soon have no choice but to start bringing them home. So that gives Democrats an out to claim that they've been vindicated.

But that's not all. Just in case that's still not enough, Bush is also moving the goalposts. We now have a whole different definition of success than we did when the surge began. In the link I just provided, The New York Times provides one of the best laugh lines I've seen in ages:

It is not clear whether the Democrats who control Congress will be in any mood to accept the changing measures. On Tuesday, there were contentious hearings over a Government Accountability Office report that, like last month's National Intelligence Estimate, painted a bleak picture of Iraq’s future.

Of course it's clear! Whenever it comes to Iraq, Democrats are in a mood to cave! That's becoming one of the great political cliches of our time.

No matter what kind of suspense they're trying to build up, we all know which way this is going to fall. Atrios called it yesterday. Dan Froomkin, back from vacation, spelled it out today:

Much of the press seems to be going along with a narrative that involves suspense over what Petraeus and Crocker will say and what Bush will decide. It's true that the public doesn't know the details yet, but it really couldn't be more obvious that Bush already knows full well what Petraeus and Crocker will tell Congress next week -- and has already decided on what he himself will tell the nation the following week. What's going on now is not deliberation, it's a PR campaign.

We know what's going to happen. We know how it will end. It's just like Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (or Alan Moore's Swamp Thing #25, if you want to be catty). Annushka has already spilled the sunflower-seed oil. The conclusion has already been decided. However reluctantly, the Democrats will give the Prez substantially what he wants. It's all business as usual.