Trouble for McCain is brewing, and as usual Digby is remarkably prescient. He wrote last Tuesday:

[McCain’s] rationale for winning in 2008 hinges on his calling for more troops and the Bush administration not listening. (Whoever wins the Republican nomination in 08 must run against both Bush and the Democrats.)

McCain made a tactical error when he asked for a specific number recently. If they give him what he wants and it fails, which it will, his rabid support for the war becomes a huge liability.

Now comes the Saturday edition of the New York Times:

Military planners and White House budget analysts have been asked to provide President Bush with options for increasing American forces in Iraq by 20,000 or more. The request indicates that the option of a major “surge” in troop strength is gaining ground as part of a White House strategy review, senior administration officials said Friday.

Discussion of increasing the number of American troops, at least temporarily, has coursed through Washington for two months, as a possible way to reverse the deteriorating security situation in Baghdad. But the decision to ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff to specify where the additional forces could be found among overstretched Army, Marine and National Guard units, and to seek a cost estimate from the White House Office of Management and Budget, signifies a turn in the debate.

McCain must be sweating bullets. If Bush decides to add troops, the strategy going forward in Iraq will be known as the McCain Doctrine. The Senator never thought Bush would actually go through with it.

For Bush, this presents an excellent opportunity to work on his legacy. Go with war hero John McCain’s plan for Iraq and it suddenly becomes his problem. Bush gets good press for trying something new, and John McCain watches his presidential hopes go down the drain.

What can McCain do now? One option would be to escalate the number of troops and add other stipulations that he could later claim were the reasons for failure. Look for him to do that on Sunday with the morning talk shows. To avoid having Iraq hung around his neck like a rotten albatross, he needs to move quickly.

The real question that is left unanswered in the NYT piece is the rationale the Bush administration has for throwing another 20,000 - 30,000 troops into the quagmire. The generals have come out against it, in fact the article even mentions Abizaid’s belief that a troop surge could easily make the situation worse. So why do it?

What do you think?