Change in Strategy?

Probably not. But Clifford D. May has written an article that acknowledges that some Democrats (in this case Kenneth Pollack and Daniel Byman, who have put out a report) at least have a plan for Iraq. The normal Conservative position is that Democrats have no plan on Iraq, the President does, so you gotta get behind the President. He does, naturally, say that their plan is ok as a worst case scenario and we have to do everything to make sure the current surge succeeds (thus Democrats have to stop criticizing the President and the war in Iraq). So he gets around to the normal point, even if he gets there by an unusual path.

Of course May's powers of analysis aren't infinite.

What's most useful about this report, in my view, is that it makes a serious attempt to foresee unpleasant outcomes and devise responses that might mitigate the damage. Why the Bush administration failed to do more and better contingency planning for worst-case scenarios remains a tragic mystery.

Poor guy; let me unpack this "tragic mystery" for him. The Bush administration had a weak case for invading Iraq and they were aware they had a weak case. They needed to pretend that the War would be cheap and painless. Planning for a long occupation in which thousands of American Troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis would die would not have gone over well. The American people might well have said, "wait, the war is going to cost this much? Let's look at that WMD evidence one more time." So they purposefully shut down any analysis of what the long term results of our invasion might be.

Still, at least he acknowledged that some Democrats have a plan on Iraq. That's a step in the right direction.