Blaming the Generals.

Bush took time in his latest presser to blame Tommy Franks for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq since 2003. He says:

Q Thank you, sir. You have spoken passionately about the consequences of failure in Iraq. Your critics say you failed to send enough troops there at the start, failed to keep al Qaeda from stepping into the void created by the collapse of Saddam's army, failed to put enough pressure on Iraq's government to make the political reconciliation necessary to keep the sectarian violence the country is suffering from now from occurring. So why should the American people feel you have the vision for victory in Iraq, sir?

"THE PRESIDENT: Those are all legitimate questions that I'm sure historians will analyze. I mean, one of the questions is, should we have sent more in the beginning? Well, I asked that question, do you need more, to General Tommy Franks. In the first phase of this operation, General Franks was obviously in charge, and during our discussions in the run up to the decision to remove Saddam Hussein after he ignored the Security Council resolutions. My primary question to General Franks was, do you have what it takes to succeed? And do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein? And his answer was, yes.

"Now, history is going to look back to determine whether or not there might have been a different decision made. But at the time, the only thing I can tell you, Wendell, is that I relied upon our military commander to make the proper decision about troop strength.

That of course, would be the same Tommy Franks who was awarded the Medal of Freedom along with George Tenant and Paul Bremer. Bush has subsequently turned on each of them, blaming them for mistakes for which only he can be ultimately responsible.

Which brings us to Petraeus. I've had the sneaking suspicion all along that Bush is setting him up, which Dan Froomkin at the Post describes right here. He quotes Tom Ricks who says:

Yet Ricks continues: "Some of Petraeus's military comrades worry that the general is being set up by the Bush administration as a scapegoat if conditions in Iraq fail to improve," he writes. "'The danger is that Petraeus will now be painted as failing to live up to expectations and become the fall guy for the administration,' one retired four-star officer said. . . .

I think that often we ascribe higher level thinking to this administration than it really deserves. This is schoolyard crap, the kind of politics that you'd find in a low level office setting. Bush is creating the way out of his own decisions, in the probable case that they will fail. He's had a lifetime of failures from which to learn this tactic, but it is really no different that the manager of the mail room who is reluctant to take responsibility for his own screw up, choosing instead to push the clerk under the bus. Petraeus found his way to the top by painting a rosy picture of the Iraq situation in an op ed in the Post just before the 2004 election. Bush was happy to choose him, but Petraeus should have known that any failure would be his, while any success would be Bush's.