Zalmay Khalilzad Is Shrill

While George W. Bush says:

I was impressed with [Malaki] the [new] Prime Minister [of Iraq], the team he has assembled, and the plan he has set for his government. I appreciate his determination, and the determination of his Cabinet, to make his agenda work. I told them that the future of Iraq is in their hands. And I told them that America is a nation that keeps its word, and America will stand with them as we work toward our shared goal: a free Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself. By seizing this moment of opportunity, we will defeat our common enemies and build a lasting democracy in the heart of the Middle East, and that will make Americans, Iraqis, and the world more secure.

U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad has a very different view of the situation: in a cable from Baghdad he joins the shrill unbalanced critics of the just-enough-troops-in-Iraq-to-lose grand strategy of George W. Bush.

Zalmay Khalilzad is perhaps the only person working for the Bush administration who has a chance of emerging from it with an undiminished reputation.