White House insiders say Bush is prepared to stay the course until '09, let Dems take blame

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http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070216/16iraq.htm

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For his part, Bush won't back away from his insistence on "victory," and he believes he can maintain the current level of U.S. forces in Iraq through the end of his presidency in January 2009 if he thinks it's necessary, White House insiders say. They tell U.S. News that Bush is prepared to stay the course until then and let his successor figure out what to do next. He is convinced that most Democrats will realize that if they somehow succeeded in ending the war by cutting spending for it, they would be blamed for the catastrophe that Bush believes would follow–and they know Bush would argue that he could have finished the job if Democrats had only backed him.

"Besides," says another administration insider, "he has based six years of his life on this policy, and he won't admit it was a mistake. That would mean his whole presidency was a failure."