It is striking to me the GW Bush goes around saying he's considering new strategies in Iraq, as if he had just begun to consider that maybe things aren't going so well and maybe it's time to whip out some new ideas.

I would have thought that a competent strategy (not to say that Bush has ever had anything like that, but perhaps his advisors "on the ground" could be accused of such, at least one would hope) would be constantly updated, including a number of contingency plans ready to implement depending on conditions, but with a full compliment of facts and figures, so that if conditions dictate a change, the commander in chief is fully apprised of options and ready to execute at once.

Is it not another sign of his utter incompetence and his complete failure as a leader that George Bush has to parade around looking pensive, wandering around his ranch followed by his pack of national security lap dogs (God was that a pathetic visual!), before he comes up with a plan?

A real "wartime" (his term, not mine) leader who recognizes the gravity of the life and death situation for which he is responsible, a leader who gives even a modicum of a damn about the troops, for example, doesn't dilly dally around deliberating over what his next move should be. Rather, that leader is so engaged and serious about achieving success that he has his contingencies lined up and ready to deploy, he is attending up to the moment to the reports of his experts and the counsel of his generals and he's ready to decide the next move, and the next and the next. He has an ongoing broad-spectrum set of analyses, not a bunch of high profile politically-oriented study groups presenting momentous opinions for him and the public to weigh and reject as needed.

Isn't it obvious that President Bush is totally unprepared to decide what to do next in Iraq? While he waits for his security team to whip up a new war-drobe, a new outfit long on political cover but short on provisions that might make any difference in Iraq, how transparent are his posturings and his procrastinations?

Bush calls himself Commander in Chief, the Decider, and yet he acts like nothing so much as a little boy who couldn't command a bathtub squadron of rubber duckies. He's the decider who can't decide. A real leader makes informed decisions crisply and with authority, in a timely fashion.

When is this nation going to call an end to Bush's charade of leadership?