Opinion (Tom Teepen): Bush now needs to heed advice

Members of the Iraq Study Group after briefing Bush

There was something a bit nutty about President Bush's recent listening tour of his own administration. His own administration? It was as if he had just figured out, after six years that he has a State Department and a Defense Department, and it occurred to him that maybe he ought to talk to some of the people in them.

The President's visits were ballyhooed with every attention-getting device short of drum rolls and trumpet flourishes.

All of this, we were told, was in the service of the President perfecting his announcement, postponed from soon to sooner or later, of a "new way forward" in Iraq. Forward, that is, from Mission Accomplished.

Actually, Bush, and Rumsfeld, had been hearing from the State and Defense departments all along, but each was so in the thrall of his own idee fixe that neither could pay attention.

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