Before the speech

So it looks like President Bush is going ahead with tonight's "major speech" on the war in Iraq.

I was half-expecting it to be postponed or delayed again, since delay and stalling for time is the whole purpose of this speech. Essentially, Bush is asking for an extension.

Another one.

That's what this whole surge/escalation business is about. Think back to last year at this time: War's not going well, ethnic conflict is blossoming into full-fledged civil war, and the troops and the publc are beginning to question the effectiveness/sanity of the patrol-until-you-encounter-an-IED battle plan. People are demanding answers and explanations and results.

In lieu of that, we got instead the Great American Stalling Tactic: the blue-ribbon study group. The Iraq Study Group was formed last March, with a high-profile bipartisan lineup of prestigious, respected experts (their expertise wasn't about Iraq — but you can't have everything).

I recognized this tactic from when I used to work with the mainline Protestant denominations of the National Council of Churches. Most of those denominations were facing nasty disputes over whether or not to offer ordination to gays and lesbians who were following a call to the ministry. So they all punted. They formed study committees. They stalled for time. They kicked the can down the road for a year, or two, or until the next biennial or quadrennial meeting. They avoided and evaded and foisted the problem off onto whoever was going to succeed them.

That's the function the Iraq Study Group served for the Bush administration. It bought them almost an entire year.

Alas, however, by last fall, the study group's work was drawing to a close. Finally, amid much buildup and hoopla, they released their final report of recommendations early last month.

That was right before the holidays, and you know how crazy things can get in December, so Bush bought himself another month or so.

But now, tonight, time's up, right? The president is about to make a Major Speech on Iraq. No more stalling.

Well, actually …

We've been given a good idea of what to expect from this speech — the announcement of/call for a "troop surge" of 20,000 or so. In other words, President Bush is about to ask for another extension so he can continue to do exactly what he's been doing, except a bit louder.

The American people, we will be told, will just need to give this "surge" time to work. Just give it time.

How much time? Another two years. Or, if not quite that, enough time for the administration to form another blue-ribbon panel or to come up with whatever the next stalling tactic may be.

Will that work? Will that fool anybody? Well, I've got to go in to work a little early tonight because the paper's deadlines have been tweaked in order to cover the speech and reaction to it. And I'm sure the cable news operations have called in their people as well to give this speech plenty of play. That means that we, the press, are set up to treat this speech as meaningful even if what the president says actually isn't. Not a promising sign.

So before the speech, a couple of facts:

1. We don't have 20,000 troops. That's not a huge number anyway — not even a sold-out concert at the Wachovia Center — but it's about twice what the U.S. military actually has available, which is something more like 9,000 troops.

Let's see whether or not that gets mentioned in reaction to tonight's speech.

2. As Dan Froomkin points out, Bush is promising "A Change in Tactics, Not Strategy":

A relatively minor increase in troops, a promise of greater cooperation from the Iraqi prime minister, a small infusion of reconstruction money — not only have we heard all this before, but it doesn't amount to much.

Bush's overall strategy seems likely to remain wholly unchanged: To keep U.S. troops in Iraq as long as it takes for the Iraqi government to start functioning effectively. That means using American bodies and firepower, pretty much indefinitely, to prop up a country racked by civil war and chafing under occupation.

But Bush is calling this a change in "strategy." And that term will, sadly but probably, be the one echoed by the press in their coverage of tonight's speech.

There's an old joke about an airline pilot getting on the PA system. "I've got good news and bad news," he tells his passengers. "The bad news is our compass and radio are broken and we have no idea where we are. The good news is our speedometer works and we're making excellent time."

That's essentially what President Bush will be saying a few minutes from now. We don't know where we're going, so let's go faster.