No Exit

Tom Engelhardt, my favorite commentator on the world at large, hits another one out of the park today: Will Daddy's Boys Extend the War? For Tom (and for me) the answer is yes, there can basically be no retreat from the disastrous policies that have American casualties approaching 50,000 and Iraqi deaths at ten times that, more or less (we don't do body counts).
On the other hand, if I may quibble with one of Tom's conclusions, he states:

In fact, what we're seeing undoubtedly adds up to something more than Iraq policy recommendations -- possibly even a genuine purge of most of the remaining neocons and their allies (who are also in the process of, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern has written, eating their own). At the Pentagon, rumor has it, the leftover neocons, many of them allies of Vice President Cheney, are just waiting for their pink slips when Gates steps aboard. All this seems aimed at leaving the Vice President's office increasingly isolated and Cheney himself sidelined.

I remain unconvinced about this. Whether or not Bush I is trying to use his influence through the ISG to remove Cheney from his seat of power (having control over Feckless Leader, and running a parallel, secret government), I don't think he's succeeded yet, and I have doubts he will.
In any case, Cheney's military base strategy seems still operative despite the immense cost. The gravy train that runs from the American taxpayer to the Halliburtons to the media and the politicians will keep going round and round.