via White House Briefing by Dan Froomkin [yesterday]
Why the delay? Press secretary Tony Snow derided all sorts of plausible explanations at yesterday's press briefing.
" Q Did the military leaders encourage him to just take a little bit more time?
" MR. SNOW: No, no, no. The President is the Commander-in-Chief; he issues orders. He decided, frankly, that it's not ready yet. . . .
" Q So some might infer that the delay means he doesn't know what to do.
" MR. SNOW: No, well, that would be the wrong inference to draw. . . .
" Q So just to get this clear, the reason for the delay is, number one, the complexity of the Iraq issue, and not because the President learned something in the last week that changed his mind?
" MR. SNOW: That is correct. . . .
"Q Is it possible that the President does not want to announce the deployment of thousands of more U.S. troops to Iraq before the holidays?
"MR. SNOW: No, it has nothing to do with that. Cynical, but false. . . .
"Q. . . . [T]here have been a number of references here about the Baker-Hamilton commission. To what extent is this delay in the expected announcement an effort to put some distance between the release of, and the reaction to that?
" MR. SNOW: It has nothing to do with it, period. Nothing."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/12/13/BL2006121300937_2.html?nav=hcmodule[Also by Dan Froomkin, today]
But Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey, writing for Newsweek, see the delay as more a function of a long, slow process to get Bush up to speed.
"It may be the party season, but there's no mood of celebration among White House aides. Between the endless photo lines and the back-to-back holiday receptions, President Bush is sitting down for extensive briefings on Iraq that go well beyond the highly staged statements and pictures seen to date on TV. . . .
"Bush's aides have chosen not to overload the president's schedule with the internal review. 'We haven't tried to do it all in one session,' said one senior White House official. 'We've been going through it methodically, and all the issues individually.'"
Michael Hirsh writes for Newsweek with yet another explanation: "Inside the Pentagon, some experts think he may intend to launch a new offensive in Baghdad, and that he doesn't want to talk about it until it happens. It's a safe bet that, faced with irreconcilable advice, this president will always revert to his default position, which is to do whatever makes him look leaderlike and tough. In this case that could mean a temporary surge."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
