George W Bush said so in his speech last week. He didn't use these words, because that would be suicide. George W Bush likes to intentionally confuse the issue so he won't be seen as the guy who is giving up in Iraq. He isn't giving up, he is setting new goals. Just because those goals don't go as far as the old goals isn't the point. He is going to stay the course, but it isn't going to be for as long as we might have thought. He will stay the course until the mid-term elections are about to be held. Then in the few weeks before the election he will declare victory and announce that the US soldiers will begin to pull back and allow the Iraqis to have more responsibility. Isn't that what John Murtha recommended? Yes, but Murtha was retreating and Bush is pulling back. Those words mean the same thing when they are translated into actions, but to the imagination of the American public who doesn't think through the details they appear to be very different.
So, George W Bush is changing his definition of victory so that he can still have a victory without winning the War in Iraq. He no longer refers to Insurgents, because 95% of the attacks come from Sunni insurgents. Instead he talks about the 5% of the attacks coming from terrorists. Quelling that 5% of the problem seems doable, so it is the new plan even though he is staying the course. The real question is: "Will the American people realize that George W Bush is pulling the old bait and switch?" Your guess is as good as mine.
It seems to me that George W Bush has determined that Iraq can never be a full and total victory like Germany or Japan, he just hasn't told the American people in so many words. No, he has chosen his own set of words crafted to give the illusion of success when failure is the reality. At every step of the way in this Iraq debacle George W Bush has come up with an excuse as to why things aren't going as planned. He has to much pride to admit that he made a mistake but he says that it was his responsibility. Where I come from taking responsibility means that you need to admit that you made a mistake. In fact, the argument used to kill Tookie Williams was that he did not admit his mistake and take responsibility for the murders he was convicted of. The argument was that if he was responsible he needed to admit his mistake. Similarly if George W Bush is responsible he needs to admit his mistake Maybe he didn't go over the intelligence reports, then he needs to say that he didn't read them and will in the future. Maybe the people working for him were incompetent, then he should found competent people to replace them. There could be a whole slew of reasons, but Bush has not changed course. I would suggest that if Bush really took ownership of the problem he would create a plan to fix the problem, not just say "we'll do better next time." How can things change if nothing changes?
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein