[Billthedrill]

Look for a very careful triangulation. Bambi's handlers are already trying to couch the whole Iraq thing as a sideshow to the "real" war in Afghanistan. That has the disadvantage of mortally insulting the people responsible for the Iraq victory but most of them don't vote Democrat anyway.

The new storyline appears to be that the Dems would have been leading cavalry charges across the Afghanistan plains were it not for the "distraction" that Bush created in Iraq. That won't fool anyone who knows even the bare basics about either the war or the Democrats but then it isn't intended to. The hope is that it will fool enough of the ignorant to get their boy into office.

That's really the key to it. Although Bambi's going to make it sound like it, he isn't forming a foreign policy here, he's forming a campaign platform. Once he's in the whole thing is renegotiable.

[Yardstick]

The new storyline appears to be that the Dems would have been leading cavalry charges across the Afghanistan plains were it not for the "distraction" that Bush created in Iraq.

Absolutely. And of course this is 180 degrees from the truth given that the left has virtually no natural enthusiasm for going after the terrorists. In fact, it's fun to imagine how glum they'd be if Bush actually got bin Laden.