[mburbank]

I'm betting on nothing. Sure, there will be some new freshly branded rhetoric, but it will boil down to no serious changes at all. There will be some noise about talking to Syria and Iran, but only if and after they do stuff we already know they won't agree to.

There were some trial balloons out of the Pentagon yesterday about 'doubling down' which would be tough guy speak for sending in a whole bunch more troops for a major offensive in Anbar province, but A.) I don't think he has the sack, and I know he doesn't have the credability and B.) We already tried to sell that as a turning point in Fallujah, and while we were totally sucseful battle wise, no points got turned.

And I can't imagine he'd ever endorse any sort of draw down or publicly accept that 'victory' is no longer on the table.

He's left himself nowhere to go but 'stay the course and call it something different'.

I could be wrong, but that's my prediction.