There are clowns at the Washington Post; no surprises in that, but they keep making it clear.

It has long been known that President Bush and General David Petraeus plan to keep troops in Iraq at whatever levels are required for as long as commanders on the ground tell them is necessary. They also hold that at “timetable” or a “date certain” are would be surrender.

Evan Bayh pestered General Petraeus for a date certain yesterday, anyway, and the Post offered us this on A10: A ‘Conditions-Based’ Answer:

Several senators asked Gen. David H. Petraeus when and under what conditions he would recommend further reductions of U.S. forces from Iraq, after an assessment this summer. The general’s responses, as an exchange with Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) shows, were less than specific.

They follow with a small bit from Bayh’s interrogation of Petraeus an an example of the general’s non-specificity. Bayh was as specific as possible, saying that withdrawal would begin “when the conditions allow you to do that without unduly risking all that we’ve fought so hard to achieve.”

Bayh (and the Post) wanted to know when that would be, and there is no way anyone would know this. Except maybe Hillary, who can channel Eleanor Roosevelt.

This is disingenous on the parts of the Indiana Senator and the DC newspaper. And it is intellectually lame.