"Success"? This isn't a new strategy. It's just a new buzzword.

His only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started... New York Times editorial

Let's just reiterate Tom Ricks' catalogue of hopeful buzzwords applied to Iraq by the White House.

“We’re going to try to meet these benchmarks.”  When the benchmarks weren’t met, they said, “Oh, don’t pay attention to those stupid benchmarks.”  Again and again, the Bush administration has kind of laid down markers and then, when they weren’t met, walked away from them.  Going back to, “Oh, there is no insurgency.”  And then it was, “It’s just a few dead-enders. And when we capture Saddam Hussein, it’ll disappear.”  Then, “As they stand up, we’ll stand down.” None of these things have been met and they simply move on to a new standard.  And when the standard’s not met, they say it was the wrong standard.  “You’re so 2005!”  Or “2006” if you’re talking about benchmarks.  Now it’s “bottom-up reconciliation.”  As a couple of senators pointed out, “Okay, if 6 months from now bottom-up reconciliation doesn’t pan out,  you’ll probably come out with some other new line about what we’re trying to do out there.”  I was struck by that phrase, “Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems.”  Which is probably way of saying, “Let’s stand back and groove on the rubble!”

Now, at least they're edging closer to reality.

“Guess what, this is Iraq,” one senior administration official told reporters on Thursday afternoon as they pressed him on whether Mr. Bush had abandoned hope of bringing about change in the time frames he had discussed in January. Another senior official argued that the White House had taken an overly America-centric approach. “It turned out that we could get a lot done in the provinces without passing oil-revenue laws,” the official said.

But the president is not offering a new strategy.  He's just biding his time, waiting for someone else to deal with the huge, intractable mess which has become his legacy to those who follow. 

If Mr. Bush had a new strategy, he would have talked to the American people last night about what he would do to draw Iraq’s neighbors into a solution...

A strategy for ending the war would include real efforts to hold Iraq’s government to verifiable measures of political conciliation — and make clear to Iraq’s leaders that they cannot count on America’s indefinite and unquestioning protection.

A real shift in strategy would have included an effort to deal with the massive problem of refugees. Nine months after the surge began, ever more Iraqis are being driven from their homes — and Mr. Bush never even mentioned them last night.

If Mr. Bush were serious about ending the war, rather than threatening Iran and Syria, he would make a serious effort to persuade them that they too have a lot to lose from a disintegrating Iraq. And he would enlist the help of the leaders of Britain, France and Germany for serious negotiations...

...Mr. Bush was clear last night — as he was when he addressed the nation in January, September of last year, the December before that and in April 2004 — that his only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started.

Watch as the president washes his hands, over and over again.