David Ignatius of the Washington Post is apparently not paying attention to what President Bush has been saying and thereby gives the impression that all of Iraq is now at odds with him.

So Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds finally found something they can agree on. They are jointly demanding that the United States set a timetable for withdrawal of its troops from their country. That's hardly the rallying cry the Bush administration might have hoped for, but perhaps it could provide a base line for stabilizing Iraq.

Just this morning his own paper reported the following from Reuters:

Bush has consistently said that U.S. forces would stand down when Iraqi forces stand up. He hinted at the possibility of a troop drawdown on Sunday in Beijing. "As the Iraqi security forces gain strength and experience we can lessen our troop presence in the country without losing our capability to effectively defeat the terrorists," Bush told reporters.

Seems then that the Iraqis were parroting the President's desire. Not only that, in the second paragraph of Ignatius' article he reports the following:

According to an account in the Arabic daily Al Hayat, sources at the conference said they wanted the withdrawal to take place over the next two years. That's not very different from the gradual pullout that U.S. military planners have been discussing.

This is what happens when a "reporter" throws his liberal bias into what is purportedly a news piece. Perhaps a better headline might have read:


IRAQIS AGREE WITH BUSH POLICY TO GRADUALLY DECREASE US PRESENCE