Rather, I think Rove foresaw that the dems and the press would go into the deep end of the pool and start treading water. All he would advise the President to do was not to overly defend himself or the war. The Dems and their surrogates in the press, being hopelessly enmeshed with the lunatic left-wing fringe, paddled right into into it saying "There is NO connection between Saddam and Al Quaeda", "Saddam had NO weapons of Mass Destruction before the war".
Lately it was Senator Fienstien's censure-ship fiasco in which He fled the senate floor and all the dems ran for cover when Senator Frist called them on it (censuring the President for defending us).
In doing these things they are hopelessly stuck in the deep end and can't back out.
Now that Saddam's documents and General Sada is speaking out they have to go into full spin control (what I call treading water) being exactly where Karl would like them to be - On the Subject of the war, rather than what the dems wish - domestic issues.
I'm praying that Karl and Senator Frist will put the dems feet to the fire before November's election and pin Hillary to the wall with an anti-flag burning bill right along side with a bill to keep the tax cuts permanent.
Hillary will have to cave into the hard left or appear like a panderer and the dem senators will have to vote with the president or be called tax raisers.
You raise a boat-load of great points. I think that the Dems and the MSM have painted themselves into a very tight and very dark corner and are desperately seeking their own "exit strategy". With the filtered release of some of the captured Saddam documents, I'm expecting to start seeing the chinks in the leftist attack strategy any day now. The "Bush lied, people died" mantra will become a gross embarrassment to the left and, if the sycophants have any sense (which we know they don't), they will recognize the change and start feeding on their own.
IMO, the news gets better every day!!