Iraq Study Group

John Podhoretz is just aghast at the ISG's recommendations. (from the Washington Post)

John's is full of outrage:

Baker, Hamilton and their crew of old Washington hands (and I mean old, like Metheuselah-level old) are recommending a "gradual pullback" of American troops but without a timetable. That basically translates into a nice, long, slow defeat - the "graceful exit" of which the president spoke so harshly.

I read both of those articles, and other than the part where the ISG recommends negotiating with Iran and Syria the recommendations sound exactly like the big plan all along. Fight al-Qaeda, get Iraq to stand on it's own two feet, maybe end up with a friendly nation in the middle of the Middle East. As a matter of fact the only thing different is, as Uncorrelated says:

Sounds like the original plan. Except it doesn’t have the twin lightning rods of Bush and Rumsfeld saying it.

or as the Mudville Gazette says

That sounds like a 360-degree about face to me.

It sounds like we will be "staying the course" for now and for that I am thankful.

Now if the MSM could start acting like this is a positive thing and writing like we're winning...........

(Did you note the capture of the Baghdad Sniper the other day? Or that 11 key members of Ansar al Sunna [a bunch of beheaders] had been captured? )