to Bush on Iraq from yesterday advocates four policies:

“(1) transitioning the U.S. mission in Iraq to counter-terrorism, training, logistics and force protection.” Translation: begin to draw-down our commitment in advance of leaving.

“(2) beginning the phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq before the end of this year.” Translation: start to leave.

“(3) working with Iraqi leaders to disarm the militias and to develop a broad-based and sustainable political settlement, including amending the Constitution to achieve a fair sharing of power and resources.” This makes sense obviously, but disarming the militias might take more U.S. military effort rather than less. And signaling our imminent withdrawal will probably make brokering political solutions more difficult (i.e., it will embolden the radicals).

“(4) convening an international conference and contact group to support a political settlement in Iraq, to preserve Iraq’s sovereignty, and to revitalize the stalled economic reconstruction and rebuilding effort.” This is another instance of the Dems’ international conference fetish. Most of Iraq’s neighbors aren’t particularly interested in seeing us succeed there, and we can’t expect the Europeans to do much heavy lifting either.

Notably, the Democrats say nothing one way or another about securing Baghdad. In sum, their policy is to tacitly concede defeat and begin to withdraw, although they try to pretty it up with a little wishful thinking thrown on top.