Editorial: War policy cannot linger

Friday, Dec. 8, 2006 | 7:10 a.m.

President Bush is speaking in noncommittal generalities about the findings of the Iraq Study Group. But the patience of Congress and the American public, greatly shortened by the accelerating pace of bloodshed in Iraq, will not last long.

The study group's report, released Wednesday, was a scathing criticism of the Bush administration's war in Iraq. It found fault with nearly every major strategy and tactic. In addition to its bleak assessment, the report offered 79 recommendations for improving the war's outlook enough so that major withdrawals of U.S. forces could begin by 2008.

"It is a report that brings some really very interesting proposals, and we will take every proposal seriously and we will act in a timely fashion," Bush said Wednesday.

As an official reaction to this top-priority report that represents eight months of study by a group of 10 distinguished officials led by former Secretary of State James Baker, this wasn't much of a statement from the president. It essentially was a nonstatement statement.

On Thursday, while in the company of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush said the study group's report would be "a really important part of our considerations," and "... it makes sense to analyze the situation and to devise a set of tactics and strategies to achieve the objective that I have stated."

This kind of empty rhetoric can only go on for so long. A road map has been laid out for Bush to follow. He says he will wait an unspecified time for more road maps from the Pentagon and the State Department before considering policy changes.

But time is at a premium, as demonstrated by the deaths Wednesday of 10 more U.S. troops. Lee Hamilton, the study group's co-leader, was asked during a Senate hearing Thursday at what point the situation in Iraq, if not corrected, would become hopeless. The Associated Press reported that Hamilton replied, "Well, there certainly is that point, and we're perilously close to that point."

Bush should not put either our country or Iraq through more of his pigheaded rhetoric and war policy. He needs to act quickly on the recommendations before him.