Snipped from dailykos.com.

Were you encouraged by Senate Republican Richard Lugar’s statement on the Senate floor that sounded like Republicans may be on the verge of caving on the Iraq War issue? I was. But unfortunately this may just be another political maneuver by the White House to set the stage for a “compromise” minus the timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. The one thing you can count on about politics is that nothing is ever the way it appears. Someone is always pulling the levers behind the curtain. The political hanky panky is enough to make one truly distrust our American way of democracy. So, it looks like we may be heading for another round of weak Democratic pandering to the Republican’s lock-in-step with the President.

I haven’t seen a crack in the Republican resolve yet and I don’t expect it to happen anytime soon. But what I do see is that Bush understands that the public is putting pressure on his Republican cohorts to end this war. So, what he is doing is setting the stage by having key Republican leaders speak about the “surge” in vague terms such as it “may be very limited”. But what isn’t being said is that being it is very limited, they may be setting the stage to appeal to the Democrats in buying more time so that it will work. It may just turn out to be “stay the course” without a timeline.

Here is a portion of the article that reveals what Lugar also said.

“The current debate in Washington has not been conducive to a thoughtful revision of Iraq policy. Our debate is being driven by partisan political calculations and understandable fatigue with bad news…

The implementation of an effective program to remedy these conditions could be as valuable to our long-term security as would be the achievement of a stable, pro-Western government in Iraq.

We cannot allow fatigue and frustration with our Iraq policy to lead to the abandonment of the tools and relationships we need to defend our vital interests in the Middle East.”

Does that sound like Republicans caving on the Iraq Withdrawal timeline? Uh, no, I don’t think so. If you would like to read the full article click the image below.