As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. “We’re not winning, we’re not losing,” Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, “Absolutely, we’re winning.”

He’s this close to trying to convince us there is no war, or to pointing at something in the distance, shouting, “Lookit that!” and running away.

I gotta tell you, if billions of dollars, and thousands of lives, and the fate of an entire region of the world wasn’t at stake, this would almost seem funny.

In another turnaround, Bush said he has ordered Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to develop a plan to increase the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps, heeding warnings from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill that multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the armed forces toward the breaking point. “We need to reset our military,” said Bush, whose administration had opposed increasing force levels as recently as this summer.

Reset the military? And what, spend another three years “not winning, not losing,” just to end up back here again, only worse? And where are the extra troops coming from? We’re stretched pretty thin as it is.