Bush's Empty Room

Herbert - The administration has no real plan on how to proceed.

It doesn't know how many troops are needed. It doesn't know, in the long term, where they will come from. It doesn't know whether it can meet the June 30 deadline for turning over sovereignty to the Iraqis. (It doesn't know what sovereignty in this context even means. June 30 was an arbitrary date selected with this year's presidential campaign in mind.) It doesn't have a cadre of Iraqi leaders to accept the handoff of sovereignty. And so on.

When you open the door to get a look at the Bush policy on Iraq, you find yourself staring into an empty room.

Meanwhile, people are dying.

When the president challenged Iraqi militants last summer with the now-famous taunt "bring 'em on," he betrayed a fundamental lack of understanding of the horror of war in general, and the incredible complexity of the situation in Iraq.

Instead of behaving as though he is responsible, as commander in chief, for the life of every man and woman who is sent into combat, Mr. Bush has behaved on more than one occasion as though he's at the controls of a video game. He does not appear to be taking this great tragedy nearly as seriously as he should.

Perhaps if he went to a few fewer fund-raisers and a few more funerals . . .