Bush's Battle of the Bulge

President Bush has been making the rounds of the State Department and other venues, all supposedly to listen to expert opinions on the situation in Iraq and any possible solutions. These are empty gestures designed for public consumption.

A speech to the nation announcing Bush's "New Way Forward" scheduled for late December has been delayed until next year.

Bush already decided on his strategy before the ISG's report was published. Since then, he's merely been buying time and distracting the press and public. Behind the scenes, I'm sure that Bush has given the orders to his generals to scrape up all the reserves they can muster to mount an offensive. I see two possibilities. The first would be an offensive in Baghdad designed to try to supress sectarian violence. If executed, it will fail.

The other tactic is to switch from trying to referee the sectarian civil war and choose to back the Shiites, who comprise the majority of the population, throwing a substantial portion of our forces currently in Iraq into an attempt to annihilate the Sunni minority, effectively leaving only one tribe standing.