Echoes

The man-made sand barriers that Louisiana is proposing to erect to block the Gulf oil spill are called berms.

That word rang a bell. George Bush, September 2006 --

THE PRESIDENT: No, no. The enemy is changing tactics, and we're adapting. That's what's happening. I asked General Casey today, have you got what you need? He said, yes, I've got what I need.

We all want the troops to come home as quickly as possible. But they'll be coming home when our commanders say the Iraqi government is capable of defending itself and sustaining itself and is governing itself. And, you know, I was hoping we would have -- be able to -- hopefully, Casey would come and say, you know, Mr. President, there's a chance to have fewer troops there. It looked like that might be the case -- until the violence started rising in Baghdad, and it spiked in June and July, as you know -- or increased in June and July.

And so they've got a plan now, they've adapted. The enemy moves; we'll help the Iraqis move. So they're building a berm around the city to make it harder for people to come in with explosive devices, for example.

This was the time when the Iraq war was going disastrously and then Bush seemed to think that a moat or ditch around the city might help things. Perhaps as the Texas oil man he always said he was, berms were standard procedure for keeping bad stuff out.

That's not a good omen for the new plan.