HERE'S THE REAL REASON BUSH WANTS TO KEEP THE SURGE GOING, why he won't plan for a drawdown of troops, why he wants more and more money for the war, why he keeps giving the Iraqi gummint more time. Eventually, somebody in charge will have to make the tough choice to get the troops out, a few at a time. When that happens, nothing will change. The Iraqis and other combatants will keep killing each other. The USA won't be able to fix the damn thing. It's HOPELESS. But Bush refuses to be that guy. He hasn't had the balls to fix Social Security, protect the borders, keep his party from spending like drunks, figure out how to pay for all the shit they've bought, or make any other hard decisions like a leader should. Bush will leave the hard choices in Iraq to the next guy. He will wimp out and pass the problem on.

JULY 2007: The Iraqi gummint has failed to deliver on ANY of the benchmarks set by the USA. The Iraqi parliament is ready for a no-confidence vote on their prime minister. Then the Iraqi parliament took all of August off for vacation. TIME TO GO.

Blame Bush for being a dummy. Blame him for discussing with his staff a possible Iraqi invasion less than two weeks after the start of his first term. Blame him for looking for any excuse to make that invasion happen. Blame the horde of clueless neoconservative idiots around him who helped him justify it. Bush keeps saying that commanders on the ground will decide if and when to leave, not politicians in Washington. And yet he has repeatedly replaced commadners who didn't want to t\do it his way. And in case he hadn't noticed, Bush himself is a politician in Washington.

The Old Lies

One of the early lies on Iraq, just before the invasion, was that Hussein had helped the 9/11 murderers. WRONG. There is ZERO evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. Dick Cheney admitted this in a televised debate with John Edwards in 2004. General Petraeus said this under oath in September 2007. George Bush admitted there was no link in September 2003, and again in August 2006.

Rumsfeld's own Defense Policy Board thought that they would justify action against Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, because it would send a message. Don't screw with the USA. Okay, so was this directionless message worth the cost in lives and money?

The intelligence was coached from the beginning. Prior to 9/11, Colin Powell and Condi Rice repeatedly said that Saddam Hussein was weak, he didn't control half his own country, he was being prevented from stockpiling weapons, he was "in a box," and so on. Suddenly, after 9/11, he was an all-powerful dictator. When Bush and Powell and Cheney were making the case that Saddam had or was seeking nuclear weapons, that he had something to do with 9/11, when all that shit has long been proven to be just that, SHIT.

When General Eric Shiseki said it would take 200,000 troops to take and hold Iraq, he was correct. When Lawrence Lindsay said an Iraqi war would cost upwards of $200 billion, he was correct, on the LOW side. For the crime of being correct, both were bulldozed from their jobs by Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

Oh, and there's always the standard line of bullshit spouted by this president and his lackeys: the war in Iraq is the same as the "War on Terror." No, they're NOT the same thing.
 

The New Lies

First we were there to stop Saddam's WMD, which, as it  turns out, Bush's guys already knew he didn't have. And it was Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda, which he didn't have (although he and Cheney trot this lie out whenever it's convenient). When both of these turned out to be bullshit, Bush said the U.S. was in Iraq to “spread democracy.”  But that's a crock. He couldn’t just say, “Yeah, we screwed up, we shouldn’t be here,” because then the next obvious step would be to leave. And he doesn’t want to be the guy who invaded another country on trumped up bullshit, broke the place to bits, then left it in shambles. So now the story is “we’re spreading democracy.” But our staunchest allies over there, at least the ones we call our allies, aren’t even democracies. Pakistan? Saudi Arabia? Without the dictatorship of Musharraf, we’re in deep doo-doo over there. So is there a legitimate rationale for being there?

September 2007: Here's one that's gotten moldy. In a surprise Labor Day visit to Iraq, Bush repeated a blatant lie for the umpteenth time: that decisions on troop levels will be made by military commanders, and not by "politicians in Washington." And yet that's what happened all along. Bush has consistently overriden and even replaced commanders who disagreed with the idea of the surge, or who suggested pulling troops out. Here's another hot point from that surprise visit: Bush had to SNEAK in. Things are still so completely unsafe there that he had to pop in and out. Before the world was even made aware that he'd gone to Iraq, Bush was gone. Otherwise, he'd have been dead. 

These liars keep talking about how well things are going in Anbar province. But it's actually quicker and safer to fly to Damascus and drive for hours through the desert to reach Anbar than it is to make the otherwise forty minute drive there from Baghdad. And Anbar is ONLY safer because one tribe has mostly driven out the other, and so there are less targets now.

There are fewer sectarian killings because there are hardly any mixed neighborhoods left. Most of the Sunni middle class has moved to Jordan or Syria.

August 2007: In September, General Petreaus is due to give the long-awaited assessment on how the surge is going. Here is what he will say: that they need more time. Every year since the beginning of this ill-conceived invasion, the Bush administration has set vague timelines for when the Iraqis were to stand up on their own. Every time one of these deadlines has been blown, the answer is "we need more time." But here's the latest kicker: this month, we learn that Petreaus won't be writing or delivering the report on rogress in Iraq. That report will come from the White House. So all this shit about how commanders will decide, and not politicians (even though Bush has been driving every decision and replaced commanders who disagreed), after all this shit about how great Petraeus is and how he'll provide the unvarnished truth about Iraq, and now it turns out Bush's cronies will spin that message after all.

July 2007: Bush once again has started using the line that "the people attacking us in Iraq are the same people who attacked us on 9/11" even though this is a bald-faced lie that even Cheney has admitted is inaccurate. The so-called "Al Qaeda in Iraq" (or AQI as the military calls it) was formed by a Jordanian with no links to Bin Laden, but who later started communications with the real mastermind behind 9/11. Also this month, Bush repeated the bullshit that if Saddam was still around, he'd be working his Al Qaeda connections. But Saddam HAD NO AL QAEDA CONNECTIONS. That's one of the things that American intelligence has long discredited. But when it's convenient, Bush trots it out again.
 

How many dead are there on both sides? And for WHAT?

Nobody running for office, other than the slightly wacky Gravel (who's actually a pretty bold guy but also nuts) wants to state the obvious. The American lives lost in Iraq have been in vain. Nothing will be accomplished. This is the absolutely tragic aspect of this. 

Thousands of civilians have been killed as well. American weapons, Iraqi and foreign insurgents, Sunni vs. Shiite, have all combined to wipe out untold numbers of common citizens. For nothing.

It has cost hundreds of billions in American dollars. Paul Wolfowitz was either lying or completely deluded when he said that Iraqi oil revenues would cover the war costs. If the USA started siphoning that oil to make its money back, the entire world, and right-minded Americans as well, would have started screaming that oil was the reason we went inthe first place. Which, indirectly, it was.

Wars in America have always coincided with the taxes needed to pay for them. But these boneheads have instead cut taxes, pushing American debt to inconceivable levels.

When it's all said and done, most of the military equipment in Iraq will need to be replaced. Less than two-thirds of the Army National Guard based in the USA is ready for deployment, as of August 2006, according to the guy running it. Why? Because the money isn't there for training and the replacement of equipment.

The USA has no influence. Its military is stretched too thin. The early wins were good, but quickly were forgotten, in the wake of the disaster that is the US occupation.

Bush acted without the United Nations. Didn't want them, didn't need them, ignored their weapons inspectors, made fun of them, and sent as his UN ambassador a complete jerk in John Bolton. A couple of years later, with everything going to hell on him, Bush wants the UN to help in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. 

Countries run by total wackos are using anti-American sentiment to fire up their citizens. It's working very well in Iran and Venezuela, for example.

By invading Iraq, Bush and Rumsfeld have shown the world the exact opposite of what they WANTED to show: that the US army can be beaten by a bunch of pissant little guerillas. The USA, instead of looking like a mighty bully, looks like an impotent bully.

Divisiveness is the rule in the USA. Rednecks and macho shitheads like to blow stuff up. But it makes no sense to follow the "commander in chief" into a war that didn't need to happen. The supposed reasons for invading Iraq were to strike back for 9/11, and to eliminate Weapons of Mass Destruction. Well, how can you possibly get things SO wrong? Iraq had nothing to DO with 9/11, and in fact Hussein did everything he could to keep foreign terrorists out of his country. They're in Iraq now because the US invasion made it possible. And everybody knows the story on WMD's. In fact, plenty of people knew it before the invasion, but Bush and his cronies suppressed that truth, as is now well documented. So why should anybody continue to support this avoidable disaster?

By pulling too many resources out of Afghanistan before the job there was finished, that country is now slipping into utter chaos. The government barely rules its own capital. Opium production is way back up. The country is unsafe to travel. Taliban fighters come and go at will. Everyone (US commanders, Afghan officials, US soldiers, villagers, provincial governors) agrees that the US military took too much of its muscle away, too soon. Where did that muscle go? Iraq.

Every time a US soldier gets nailed for torturing prisoners, committing rape and murder, mistreating locals, arresting whole families, and a host of other things that inevitably happen when any army in history has gone into the field, it gets broadcast around the world. American honor and prestige have taken a massive beating. Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other black eyes have put the US in an even deeper hole in world opinion, making it increasingly difficult for the country to find consensus when it needs it. American influence is on the wane, and under Bush, it was shaky to begin with. More than sixty percent of all Americans believe that world leaders have no respect for Bush. Having traveled and done plenty of business internationally, I can personally attest to that.

Absolutely nothing good has come from this. The USA is in even greater debt than it was already, under the spendthrift GOP Congress. 

The Iraqi PM, Maliki, visited the USA in July 2006. He promptly ripped on Bush. Having no balls at all, Bush did nothing. Democrats asked for some sort of clarification or apology. Maliki went home, and got ripped himself by Iraqi clerics, so nobody can win. Stability in Iraq is many years away. The most likely scenario in Iraq is years of civil war. There will be no peace. With or without the presence of US troops, it will be murderous chaos.

Despite what Paul Wolfowitz and other neocons made up off the top of their scheming heads, there is no oil revenue coming to help the USA pay for this debacle.

July 2007: Ryan Crocker, the top American ambassador in Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "if there is one word I would use to sum up the atmosphere in Iraq, on the streets, in the countryside, in the neighborhoods and at the national level, the word would be fear."  All these years, all these hundreds of billions of dollars, and this is what the USA has gained in Iraq.

Early August 2006: Don Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Pace, and American commander in Iraq General Abizaid all got to testify in front of Congress. They gave a terrible view of the prospects for success. Civil war is right around the corner, if it hasn't already begun. The situation just gets worse and worse. Their plan for fixing it? THEY DON'T HAVE ONE. They're going to move more troops into Baghdad, because that city has gotten worse. But they'll be draining those troops from another province that is also going to hell. In other words, stay the course, even though the course is leading to greater numbers of casualties among the population. 

Israel attacks Hezbollah in Lebanon. Some stuff works, some doesn't. So they change their strategy, just days into the conflict. Meanwhile, the USA invades Iraq, screws the pooch every which way, and CONTINUES doing the same things wrong, because a hallmark of the Bush administration is to never admit mistakes.

Summer 2007: The SURGE is a joke. It's a band-aid. If the Iraqi police and army aren't ready to take over, after all these years, they never will be. If the USA leaves in 2007, 2008, or five years later, it doesn't matter. It will be a slaughter. 

To keep Iraq under wraps, you need the Sunni tribes to be strong. But to guard against Iranian influence completely overwhelming the place, you need the anti-Iranian Shiites. And no matter what, everybody there hates the USA, and are only going along because we're giving them guns, cover, food, supplies, whatever. As soon as the US military is no longer valuable to them, they'll be shooting at them again. THERE'S NO POINT TO THIS.

Once out of Iraq, the USA starts saving money (probably so the Republicans can blow it on other shit, on credit, that ALSO is not needed). The military can begin rebuilding. It must replace thousands of vehicles and other equipment that's been worn down by years of use under conditions it wasn't designed for. Jeeps, Humvees, tanks, etc., have all gone to hell in the desert heat and dust.

The country can then begin to truly examine how bad the damage is in prestige and money. Americans can, without having the phony patriotism thrown in their faces, dig down for the REAL reasons we invaded Iraq, and what liars these people are that put us there.

Maybe we can even start working on a REAL fix for Social Security.

Nouri al-Maliki has already been pronounced in secret U.S. memos as worthless. It was discovered in spring 2007 that he'd been leading a sectarian effort to make sure his tribe comes out on top. He kisses up to Moqtada al-Sadr.  And in spring 2007, the legislature there decided to take a TWO-MONTH VACATION. Holy shit, the American people want OUT of this thing, they want a plan, they want things to calm down, and the Iraqi gummint wants to take a nap. This is reminiscent of the members of the Saudi royal family being photographed partying in discos while American troops were fighting to liberate Kuwait and protect the Saudi border. These people are WORTHLESS.

August 2007: The Iraqi parliament can't agree on a damn thing. Then just to show that they refuse to work on a U.S. timeline, they took a recess. Tony Snow, Bush's mouthpiece, at one point tried to justify this, saying it was "too hot" for them to work. Oh, but it's not too hot for U.S. troops who are wearing full-gear and hauling 100-plus-pound packs around when it's 120 in the shade? Way to trip on your forked tongue, Snow.

The U.S. presence in Iraq is making things WORSE

September 2006: A national Intelligence Estimate (long overdue) says that the US war in Iraq serves as a powerful recruiting tool for terrorist organizations, the kinds of organizations that didn't exist in Iraq unti the US military invaded and made it possible for them to operate there.

This protracted war will just go on and on. The American presence is a recruiting tool for terrorists, who weren't IN Iraq until after the invasion made it possible for them to enter. More American troops will die needlessly. Even more Iraqis will also die in the horrific sectarian violence.

The costs just go on and on. Bush has gotten every blank check he's asked for. One of the sleazy tactics used against John Kerry in the 2004 election was that he "voted against body armor for the troops." Uh, boys, why were the troops sent there without that armor in the first place?

No Iraqi government under the American umbrella will ever have credibility, there or anywhere else in the Arab world. 

The situation in Iraq is so bad, there's no point in the US military hanging out. The UN Secretary-General says that civil war, if it hasn't already begun, is inevitable. Commanders on the ground have stated that the entire (and very large) Anbar province in the west of Iraq is completely screwed, in terms of peace, stability, control, etc. It would take a whole bunch more troops, possibly 50000 or more, and a lot more time, to bring it under control, and that just isn't going to happen. 

The new Iraqi troops and police aren't making an effort. In incident after incident, US troops drag Iraqi troops along on raids or attacks, only to be either ambushed (because the Iraqis keep tipping off their insurgent buddies) or be abandoned when the Iraqi troops wither in combat. During one ambush, it was the American trainers and advisers who had to shoot their way out of it, while the Iraqi security forces cowered. In another terrible situation, the US military turned over a brand-new base to a local security force, and the very next day, while the locals looted the base and set fire to it, the security guys walked away and let it happen.

The American military has record numbers of troops and reserves trying to get out of their obligations (or forced obligations) to return to duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. In September 2006, a whole regiment returned to their base in Alaska, thinking they were going to go home, only to find out they were going right back to Iraq. The political momentum in the USA is leaning toward getting the hell out sooner than later.

The USA can't win in Iraq. The best we can do is get out as quickly and easily as possible. WE CAN'T WIN. The idiot in charge has presented his citizens with a completely unviable position. Whether the entire country of Iraq is pacified or not, the USA will still face terrorists around the world. Killing all the bad guys in Iraq won't change that, despite Bush's feeble efforts to tie Iraq to the "war on terror."

It's time for Bush to admit that going into Iraq was a gargantuan mistake, ackowledge the fact that Iraq can't be "won," and bring home the troops he so stupidly sent there in the first place.