By Ira Chernus
Mother Jones

A week has passed since George W. Bush announced that U.S. troops will stay in Iraq in “a security engagement that extends beyond my Presidency.” Last spring, those words would have evoked howls of protest from Democratic leaders. Now, scarcely a peep.

While the world was on August vacation, Republican and Democratic leaders moved toward a compromise. The outlines are clear enough: Some U.S. troops will start leaving Iraq soon, but tens of thousands will stay on indefinitely with a permanent mission of providing something called “overwatch.” This open-ended “Korea model” seems to be a done deal. About the only issue left to debate is how fast the “transition” should happen, how quickly the troops that aren’t staying should be “redeployed.”

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Last spring, with the President’s surge plan seemingly floundering, it looked like the Democrats were winning that contest. Then, over the summer, the administration began to catch up-and not just by accident. According to the Washington Post:

“Ed Gillespie, the new presidential counselor, organized daily conference calls at 7:45 a.m. and again late in the afternoon between the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the U.S. Embassy and military in Baghdad to map out ways of selling the surge. From the start of the Bush plan, the White House communications office had been blitzing an e-mail list of as many as 5,000 journalists, lawmakers, lobbyists, conservative bloggers, military groups and others with talking points or rebuttals of criticism. Between Jan. 10 and [early September], the office put out 94 such documents.”

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