Cockeyed Optimists

You know it's getting bad for the White House when they are taking comfort in numbers like these:

Administration officials believe much of the public is still eager for victory and open to persuasion if the president can make the case that he has made progress. They took heart in a survey last week by RT Strategies, a bipartisan polling firm, that found that 49 percent of Americans favor bringing troops home when only "specific goals and objectives" are met, 30 percent want a fixed timetable for pulling out and 16 percent support immediate withdrawal. The middle 30 percent, they figure, is the real political battleground.

OK, let's break this down:

1. Immediate withdrawal is the same as a timetable, only the time is now. So let's just add the two together and get: 46% favor some kind of fixed timetable.
2. While the Washington Post doesn't give the margin of error of the RT Strategies poll, let's be generous and assume a very large sample size with a margin of error of 3%. We now have a statistical dead heat between those advocating a timetable, and those advocating conditional withdrawal.
3. Withdrawl based on "specific goals and objectives" is the most abstract way of phrasing the Bush "plan". Given that solid majorities for some time have disagreed with Bush's handling of the war, it's hard to see how this poll refutes that fact.

So, what we have here is an administration taking comfort in the fact that they're breaking even in a poll that underestimates the real disapproval that people have to their policy. Ouch.

What's New, Pussycat?

When it comes to the Bush administration's "Victory in Iraq" plan, released yesterday, the answer, of course, is nothing. As the Washington Post notes, the "new" plan was actually pieced together from "declassified portions of long-standing war plans." Same old shit, different day. On one level, however, it's "Mission Accomplished" for the White House, since I did hear reporters on TV last night talk about our "brand new plan" for winning the Iraq war. Kind of depressing, that.

Still, "new" isn't all there is — if the plan was solid, detailed, and realistic, that would be an improvement over what we've been spoon-fed so far. But, alas, it's nothing of the kind. Matthew Yglesias at Tapped sums it up rather nicely:

Now the way a normal planning document would work is that after having identified some challenges, you would explain the plan for meeting them. But the "detailed" section on the political track just ends right there and the discussion moves on to other things. Alleged signs of progress are noted in great detail, which is useful for propaganda purposes, but doesn't constitute a strategy. Then some problems are flagged. And then … nothing. Right where the strategy is called for, it goes blank.

Exactly. Much like the business plan created by South Park's Underpants Gnomes, the Bush plan seems to be:

1. Train Iraqi Troops
2. ???
3. Victory!

It's step 2 that gets you every time.