Contradiction or Tautology: you decide

Here is a comment I attempted to post at Captain's Quarters. Since I am 'unverified' there, I don't know if it will show up, so I copied it here so as not to forget this wisdom:

Ed Morrissey scribed,

The Los Angeles Times editorial board not only contradicts its previous editorials on Iraq, today's editorial contradicts itself. After pushing for withdrawal from Iraq on the basis that the US and Iraqis had made no real political progress, today they argue that we should withdraw because political progress has undeniably begun

My comment in reply is

The Republican logic is what is contradictory. "We are losing, so we have to stay so the soldiers who died won't have died in vain." "We are winning, so we have to stay so we don't start losing again." It's Catch-22 all over again, Yogi.

Of course, there is the spin. "We are winning because we surrendered to the Sunni in Anbar and they haven't started shooting at us again." Also, the surge is working because violence is "down", that is, less than it was at the peak of the surge, but still higher than it was two years ago.

The conclusion that we should withdraw from Iraq, whether we are "winning" or "losing", is a logical tautology.