Over at Josh's place, David Kurtz is torpedoing myths about the preznit. It's good stuff. A snippet:

There are some indications that the reason for delaying the President's announcement of "The New Way Forward" is so that he can announce a fait accompli.…I wouldn't be surprised to see new deployment orders already issued by the time Democrats officially take over Congress in the first week of January, the President's way of grabbing his crotch and saying, Debate this.

That sounds exactly right, dubya is gonna send a message to Congress that he's still in charge of the military. They only provide the funding. He's just daring them to try to restrain him by cutting that funding. It would give him the out he needs. He could immediately start blaming every bad thing that happened in Iraq on the Dems for not supporting the troops. None of it would be his fault any more. He could withdraw our troops under protest and chant "cut and run Democrats" all the way back to Crawford. I doubt the Dems will rise to the bait though. It seems much easier for them to just sit back and let dubya stew in his own juices. They can let him demonstrate his own incompetence. Even if he sends in more troops and the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, he will still keep the world's most powerful military chasing an imaginary victory until he leaves office. And the American public will be calling for his scalp by then. He refuses to comprehend that what is broken in Iraq can't be fixed by force. Peace is not a military objective. It just isn't.