Senator Kerry appeared on Meet the Press this morning to engage in a debate over the future course of the war in Iraq with Republican Senator John McCain. I'm not quite sure who John McCain showed up to debate, but at times it didn't seem to be John Kerry. Instead the Republican Presidential candidate tried to pretend that the Democrats were responsible for the failed policies of the last 4 1/2 years in Iraq.

Gee, weren't the Republicans in charge of both the Presidency and the Congress for most of that time? Didn't the Democrats introduce bills and amendments in this new Congress to change the course in Iraq, only to have those measures run up against Republican filibusters? And didn't John McCain vote, time after time, to continue the war policies of this Administration? This is George Bush's War and the failure to change course belongs to President Bush and to the Republicans in the Congress who continue to block real change in Iraq.

Kerry repeated his proposal to have American combat troops be redeployed from Iraq within a year. The Senator quoted American Generals and Republican politicians and US diplomats who have repeatedly stated that there is no military solution to the crisis in Iraq. The government in Iraq has to come together to resolve their fundamental political differences. Our troops in Iraq cannot do that for the Iraqi Government.

Our military cannot resolve Iraq's political differences. Until a serious effort is mounted by the Iraqi government to resolve these disputes, Iraq will remain where it is and the civil war and bloodshed will continue. Gen Petraeus stated as much last week in his testimony on Capitol Hill. Kerry stated again that "no young American soldier should give their life or limb in order to have Iraqi politicians continue to delay making fundamental decisions. That’s what this is about."

Given President Bush’s impressively low approval ratings, and the polls indicating that a substantial majority of Americans now believe his misbegotten war in Iraq has been a miserable failure, it’s safe to say that few of his constituents really expected him to be completely honest with them in his speech to the nation last night. By that standard, he certainly did not disappoint. In fact, he exceeded expectations.

This speech capped a week-long blitz of spin and salesmanship aimed at getting Americans to buy into Mr. Bush’s latest version of success in Iraq. That’s a pretty tough sell these days, though. They’ve already been suffering from buyers’ remorse when it comes to his failed policies and flawed strategies, both at home and abroad. But like someone shopping for a used car, they still want to believe that they might finally end up getting a good deal instead of another clunker this time.

So, like any good used-car salesman, Mr. Bush gave them a slick sales spiel last night. Sure, maybe that meant shading the truth a little bit — or a lot — but that’s just part of the game when you’re trying to make a clunker look like a good deal. “No, really. This country was owned by a little old dictator who only drove it to war on Sundays.” Yeah, right. And it’s never been wrecked or rusted, either.

The script to Mr. Bush’s speech included many striking examples of spinning the facts, shading the truth, and flat-out snake-oil salesmanship on his part. He started off by referring to Iraq as a “young democracy” and “an ally” that “has placed its trust in the United States” — a characterization that the separatist Kurds, minority Sunnis, sectarian militias, and displaced refugees fleeing the civil war there might find rather hard to agree with.

Sen. John Kerry issued the following statement this evening, in response to the remarks by President Bush.

Only President Bush could applaud a race back to the starting line when the finish line should be in sight. This is proof positive that the Bush escalation has been a failure. President Bush should acknowledge that the Iraqis have squabbled while American troops fought, squandering the political opportunity our brave soldiers died to create," said Senator John Kerry. "This is more of the same flawed strategy in the face of overwhelming evidence that there is no military solution to Iraq’s civil war. We must change this disastrous Bush policy, and we must change it now.

The Bush administration’s ill-conceived, unwinnable war in Iraq has cost Americans dearly.

In financial terms alone, the price of pursuing such a disastrous course has been extremely high. Americans have paid more than 450 billion dollars for this president’s war to date, with billions more dollars being spent on it every single day that we stay the course in Iraq.

450 billion dollars is an awful lot of money to throw away on something that Americans didn’t want, don’t need, and will be stuck paying the price of for generations to come. That’s enough to build 4 million new homes, hire 8 million public school teachers, or send 22 million people to college.

Even the most profligate spenders on the planet know that’s way too many billions to waste. But it’s only money, after all. There’s always plenty more where that came from. Or at least those running the White House and the Pentagon seem to think so.

But blood is more precious than gold. The money’s nothing compared to the lives of our men and women in uniform. 3,776 of them have died in Iraq as of this writing. Over 30,000 of them have been wounded. And that terrible cost keeps mounting every day that we stay the course there, too.

Is that too high a price to pay for a military misadventure that’s been mismanaged from day one? Most Americans believe that it is. But the administration and its allies in Congress don’t seem to think so.

The headline on the Associated Press article caught my eye as I rode the train to work this morning. “Officials: Bush to Cut Troops,” it said, “President will address nation, adopt Gen. Petraeus’ drawdown plan.”

No way, I thought to myself. What a misleading way for a newspaper headline to spin things. The plan they’re talking about isn’t a drawdown. It’s a letdown. And it’s not even a Petraeus plan, either.

The article began by stating that “President Bush will tell the nation tomorrow night that he plans to reduce the American troop presence in Iraq by as many as 30,000 by next summer but will condition those and further cuts on continued progress, The Associated Press has learned. In a 15-minute address from the White House at 9 p.m., Bush will endorse the recommendations of his top general and top diplomat in Iraq, following their appearance at two days of hearings in Congress, administration officials said.”

That way of phrasing things implies that President Bush will now be following the advice of his representatives in Iraq, rather than the other way around. It gives the impression that he was waiting for their input before deciding what to do about troop levels in Iraq. As members of his own administration have been quietly pointing out for several weeks now, that’s simply not the case. Mr. Bush has been keeping his own counsel on all his unilateral Iraq initiatives all along, and he’s not going to stop doing so now.

And even without the included disclaimer that he may change his mind at any time depending on his interpretation of events on the ground, it’s not as though the president will be calling for an actual drawdown of forces in Iraq. According to Petraeus’ own statements in recent days, troops that are coming to the end of their scheduled deployments over the next several months will be allowed to leave Iraq instead of having their tours extended again. Letting people come home when they’re supposed to come home is hardly the same as withdrawing them by choice.

The long-awaited moment finally arrived: General David Petraeus, the senior military maven currently overseeing our counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq, appeared before Congress this week to give elected officials his official take on events over there. Joining him to represent the diplomatic department’s side of things was Ryan Crocker, America’s ambassador to Iraq.

Anticipation of these appearances had been running high for some time, because the White House originally indicated that its ongoing Iraq policy would be shaped by Gen. Petraeus’ September report. President Bush spent the summer dodging questions by deferring to the upcoming “Petraeus Report” as his rationale for not changing course in Iraq. But the White House had recently begun been lowering expectations for this week’s appearance by letting it be known that there wouldn’t actually be a published Petraeus Report per se.

The usual assortment of “unidentified officials” had also leaked that no matter what the general said, Mr. Bush was planning on going ahead and continuing to do what he had already decided to do in Iraq anyway. So this week’s much-ballyhooed Congressional testimony by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker — what bloggers such as Larry Johnson have referred to as being akin to a Kabuki theatre performance — had an inevitably anticlimactic air about it by the time it finally came to pass.

Judging by what’s been heard on the Hill so far, nothing new was said and there were no real surprises in store from these two senior representatives of the Bush-escalated actions in Iraq so far. The general kept sticking to his guns, as it were. The ambassador kept being, well, diplomatic about things.

Their default approach seemed to be to keep asking for more time for more troops while admitting to the obvious — there’s still been no real progress made towards a viable political solution in Iraq, but we will begin to withdraw some of our forces there by next spring (since it’s already understood that we can’t sustain the full troop count much longer than that anyway).

Today the dynamic duo of Petraeus and Crocker sat down with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss the details of the current quagmire in Iraq. It was reminiscent of a similar duet performance by William Westmoreland and Ellsworth Bunker from back in 1967: Senators spoke, a general and an ambassador replied, and in the meanwhile a divisive and destructive war went on.

This is what it's about. These are the benchmarks that were agreed upon by the Congress back in the spring. This is what would show or not show progress in Iraq. This is what it's about.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee meets this morning, September 11, 2007, to talk about whether or not these benchmarks that were mandated by Congress and agreed to by the Pentagon and the White House. This is what the escalation was to be judged on. This is what it is about.

IRAQ BENCHMARKS

(i) Forming a Constitutional Review Committee and then completing the constitutional review.

(ii) Enacting and implementing legislation on de-Ba’athification reform.

(iii) Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources to the people of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, and enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the energy resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shi’a Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner.

(iv) Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions.

(v) Enacting and implementing legislation establishing an Independent High Electoral Commission, provincial elections law, provincial council authorities, and a date for provincial elections.

(vi) Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty.

Sen. Kerry appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos this morning to discuss the US troop escalation in Iraq. President Bush and many of his Republican enablers in the Congress are arguing that the escalation is working because the overall level of violence is down slightly in Iraq. The Administration and most of the Republicans running for President have also declared that the defeat of Al Qaeda in Al Anbar province shows that the escalation is working.

Back in mid July, Gen. Patraeus and Ambassador Crocker appeared in a briefing for Congress held at the Pentagon and Ambassador Crocker also testified before the Senate Foreign Relation Committee on the progress in Iraq. Sen. Kerry was asked about that testimony in a appearance on Coundown with Keith Olbermann just after that testimony. Was progress being made toward the political reconciliation? That was the reason given for the escalation after all, to give the Iraqi government time to begin to resolve their political differences. Was that happening?

OLBERMANN: From either General Petraeus or Ambassador Crocker today in either of these forums, did you hear anything to give you confidence that a couple of more months might buy Iraq enough time to secure that government political reconciliation?

KERRY: On the contrary, what I heard today was a quiet, subtle moving of the goalposts where they‘re now saying that the benchmarks themselves may not be the important measurement, the process may be the important measurement.

And I would worry about that because that will be an effort to try to claim tactical success in some of the military efforts of the escalation and then use that as an excuse to continue down the same road.

I think people want a change in the policy and the only change will be the acceptance by the Iraqis of their responsibility to have the process of reconciliation, to resolve the oil law, to resolve the constitutional changes, to resolve the election needs.

All of those things are the key, and absent that it‘s going to be very hard to believe why young Americans should be caught in the crossfire of this sectarian violence.

As a war-weary world awaits the latest round of reports from Iraq, the White House keeps trotting out its dog-and-pony show of photo ops, prognostications, and pre-canned pundrity in its ongoing effort to convince people that “the surge” is working in Iraq.

“The surge” is not working in Iraq, and the Bush administration’s rhetoric isn’t working here at home.

Calling the increased buildup of military forces in Iraq that the President pushed through at the beginning of this year a “surge” is a bit of a misnomer all by itself.

A “surge” is generally defined as a short, sudden, sea change. The administration’s addition of some 30,000 troops to those already on the ground in Iraq (not to mention the thousands of paid contractors required to support them) was announced months in advance, and then took many more months to fully execute.

The White House has left little doubt that those additional forces will still be on the ground in Iraq for many more months to come. So it’s hard to see how this ill-conceived endeavor could qualify as being either short or sudden.

As for it being a sea change, that’s not exactly accurate either. Yes, the additional boots on the ground have made a noticable difference in some areas of Iraq, though hardly in all. But is that difference an honest one or, more to the point, a lasting one?

The administration’s spokespeople and spinmasters would certainly have you think so, but the facts of the matter still indicate otherwise. Talking points and photo ops notwithstanding, the positive effects of this additional buildup of troops in Iraq are fungible at best and they come at a disturbingly high price in lives and material.

So if this isn’t a “surge,” then what is it? It’s an escalation, an ongoing increase in commitment of precious resources to a problem without a practical solution.

The White House has escalated our military presence in Iraq, significantly increasing the many dangers our troops face there without producing measurable benefits in terms of the internal political reconciliation that is the only hope of holding Iraq together as a nation.

It has escalated our financial losses from this ill-conceived military adventure (currently running in the neighborhood of three billion dollars per week – per week! – at a time when soaring deficits have resulted in critical cuts to many key programs here at home.)

It has escalated its message-control efforts in an attempt to spin this continuing buildup of forces as a positive thing, producing dozens of pre-canned pro-administration talking points and photo ops every day. It has escalated its output of spurious spin and excessive obfuscation in an attempt to keep people from seeing the obvious: that by any measure, the White House’s stubborn insistence on escalating the war in Iraq has failed to accomplish its stated goals.

This article was written by Senator Kerry this morning and was cross-posted to DailyKos and to The Huffington Post

The escalation failed to do the one and only thing it was supposed to do. The entire Iraq policy of George W. Bush has failed since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad. No amount of parsing or spinning can change those simple facts: the escalation is and was the wrong answer.

I chaired a hearing on the GAO Report yesterday, the report that stated that Iraqi civilians overall aren’t any safer, that the political benchmarks aren’t being met in Iraq, that, in short, none of the rationales for the escalation in Iraq have come to pass. It unfolds with maddening, enraging regularity: the Administration claims goals for their policy, they gradually back off of those goals and substitute smaller, less easily measured goals, and then muddy the waters hopelessly on whether even those modest new goals have been met. Time and again we’ve been through this.

That’s why the Congress set up some clear benchmarks to measure what’s happening in Iraq. Mitch McConnell praised the “clarity” those benchmarks brought to the debate. “Just wait until September,” they all said. “We put in these meaningful benchmarks, we can judge in September.”

Well, how do they judge those benchmarks now? Only three of 18 have been met. Another four were “partially met,” which sounds like a “Gentleman’s C” if I’ve ever heard of one (and, for anyone who saw my college transcript, I have.).

Judgment time is here, and the only verdict is the same one we had in January, the same one we’ve had for a long time in Iraq: the Bush policy is a tragic failure. It’s a policy that not only isn’t working; it can’t work. A political solution in Iraq cannot come about without a clear deadline on where our troops will be pulling out. Only Iraqis can end this civil war, and they aren’t — and won’t be — making any progress with an open-ended, massive presence by our military in their country.