Can Bush Find An Exit? (Get Real)

He plans on leaving the mess to the next president, presumably a Democrat, just as Vietnam was dumped on Nixon, who, of course, pledged to end it and then made it worse.

If Iraq is left to a democratic president, let's hope he or she is prepared to do the right thing and stop the occupation of a labd into which we were never invited in the first place.

TIME.com: Can Bush Find An Exit? -- Dec. 11, 2006 -- Page 1:

George Bush has a history of long-overdue u-turns. He waited until he woke up, hungover, one morning at age 40 before giving up booze cold. He fought the idea of a homeland-security agency for eight months after 9/11 and then scampered aboard and called it his idea. He dumped Donald Rumsfeld last month as Defense Secretary, although lawmakers and even some generals had been calling for his head since 2005. Bush's biggest reversals usually come after months--even years--of stubborn resistance, when just about everyone has given up on his having any second thoughts at all. That's always been the point: he's a decider, he says, and deciders aren't supposed to undecide. When he does have to Kojak the car and head down the street in the opposite direction, he takes a little extra time getting it done.

But Bush has never had to pull off a U-turn like the one he is contemplating now: to give up on his dream of turning Babylon into an oasis of freedom and democracy and instead begin a staged withdrawal from Iraq, rewrite the mission of the 150,000 U.S. troops there as they begin to draw down, and launch a diplomatic Olympics across the Middle East and between Israel and the Palestinians. Even calling all that a reversal is a misnomer; it would be more like a personality transplant.