The President Will Have Frank And Open Discussions At His Summit Of Yes Men

We're coming to you from the Better Late Than Never department (a wholly owned subsidiary of Who You Trying To Kid, in partnership with Too Little Too Late) here at IM Central where we have just learned that president Bush will convene a summit on the war in Iraq.

The president plans two days of meetings at the mountainous Camp David presidential retreat with national security advisers on hand and top commanders in Iraq connected by videoconference. When asked why the president had decided to convene a summit now, three years into the war, White House Press Secretary Tony Snowjob said, "He just felt like staying up at Camp David this week...I mean Zarqawi, that Zarqawi guy. He's dead and we have to be ready to be welcomed as liberators."

The high-level talks aimed to capitalize on the killing of Al-Qaeda's chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as the formation of Maliki's government, which US officials say gives them an excuse to declare victory and "beat feet out of there before November."

General George Casey said he thinks it will be possible to withdraw some of the 130,000 U.S. forces in the months ahead putting him in first place among administration officials for the number of times they have announced the possibility of troop withdrawals while actually increasing them.

Iraq national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie told US television that the talks at Camp David would deal with US troop levels, predicting that US-led forces could be sharply drawn down by the end of 2006."I believe by the end of the year, of this year... that the number of the multinational forces will be probably less than 100,000 in this country," Rubaie told CNN. "Of course I also believe in...how do you Americans say it...the fairy of the teeth?"

Bush said the new government marks a new chapter in the U.S. relationship with Iraq. "I don't want to say we've turned a corner," the president said. "But it looks like that's what I'm going to have to say because no one changed the phrase. I though we were changing that to light at the end of the tunnel this month. Where's Tony?" Later the president told reporters that "home stretch" was actually to be the phrase during this phase of the war."

The re-evaluation of the administration's Iraq policy starts with meetings for Bush, his national security team and the military commanders. It continues with a luncheon attended by outside experts. When asked if "re-evaluation" was a term that could be applied to a policy that hadn't been thought through in the first place, Press Secretary Snowjob said he wasn't sure, but felt "The evaluation that had been performed on the initial evaluative positions would most likely be returned to in this evaluation to have its evaluative performance evaluated in a quasi evaluative sort of scenario. Plus there will be chocolate milk at lunch and that's a result of the president's re-evaluation of the menu."

Bush said he wanted a "realistic appraisal" of the war effort and declined to speculate on whether he had actually ever used the words "realistic" and "appraisal" together in the same sentence before.

The sessions conclude with a joint meeting via videoconference with Bush's Cabinet and top ministers in al-Maliki's new government. "Providing they haven't been blown up by then," Snowjob added.