President Bush, just back from Iraq, dismissed calls for a U.S. withdrawal as election-year politics and refused to give a timetable or benchmark for success that would allow troops to come home.

"It's bad policy," Bush said in a Rose Garden news conference Wednesday, about six hours after he returned from Iraq. "I know it may sound good politically. It will endanger our country to pull out of Iraq before we accomplish the mission."

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Bush said he wanted to see a reduction in the deadly violence in Iraq but would not say how much it must drop before troops can begin to withdraw. He offered other ways of measuring progress in Iraq - an increase in oil production or more electricity delivered to cool sweltering homes or growing numbers of Iraqi military units able to handle the fight.

I think Bush will get a great deal of pressure from his party to at least make a good show of reducing troops in Iraq. It may be the only thing to save them the election. That said, I agree with Bush about not pulling out too early. I wish we didn't have to be there at all, but since we are we need to do things right. And pulling out suddenly would leave the Iraqi people in greater danger.

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