Warnings of "Iraq challenges" somehow prove Bush is brilliant

Came across this post and was shocked by war supporters' spin.

That American Can’t Do Spirit [Dan Collins]

Celebrated by the LA Times this Memorial Day Weekend: Bush was twice warned of Iraq challenges

Holy shit! You mean he was warned twice that it mightn’t be easy to bring security, democracy and prosperity to Iraq?

Wow! There you have it. The Republican 'take' on the report that laid out how Bush was warned about virtually all of the dangers of a long occupation in Iraq....is that this proves how brave Bush really was.

Okay, first let me just point out that we've only seen "Grim Bush" since November. Up to that point we had "Smiley Bush" who believed that everything in Iraq was getting better every day and that the "insurgents" were merely "dead-enders" who were in their "final throes". It was "Smiley Bush" and his team of wishful thinkers that completely bungled things, not "Grim Bush". The Republican spin is apparently that Bush knew it would be hard, that civil war (that's not really civil war) could be an option, that a long occupation could mean that we'd take heavy casualties, but goshdarnit, he went ahead and took the risk. Well, that's a Republican fairy tale. Every single thing about the occupation was planned for only the best possible outcome. A Bush staffer who predicted that the war could cost as much as $100 billion was ridiculed by the White House and fired. Yet the Republicans honestly present this as a President who proceeded knowing full well that he would face terrible setbacks.

From the outset, Bremer made decision after decision that could only create the situation of a long occupation, despite the report's warning of the dangers:
- Put 20,000 Baath Party members out of work overnight. These are the 20,000 who actually know how to administer Iraq and who know how to get things done. Watch as things cease to get done.
- Eliminate the Iraqi Army and put 100,000 armed and trained men out a job. Watch as security evaporates.
- Send in less than half the troops you need to maintain order in a country without an army and a police force in shambles. Watch as sectarian militias infiltrate the police and military.
- Wipe out every Iraqi institution that makes a civil society work, and replace them with foreign institutions and administer them in a foreign language.
- Make Iraq the 51st state rather than giving Iraqis control in how their country would be shaped.
- Pretend that elections automatically produce pro-U.S. governments. Watch as they don't.

Yep, Bush knew all about these risks, but he and his stooges went ahead with a brave plan that guaranteed we would be running the show In Iraq for a long time.
The real truth is that Bush and his cronies had a plan that went like this:
- Install Ahmed Challabi as a puppet leader.
- Bask in the adulation of grateful Iraqi masses who eagerly give us their oil.
- Claim success and gloat over Democrats who thought this might get tricky.

You see, this is a plan that differs from a Bush Administration who was fully aware that "it mightn’t be easy to bring security, democracy and prosperity to Iraq". In fact, Bush replaced Shinseki when he told Bush that the going would get tough. Remember, the White House continues to deny that Iraq is involved in a civil war. Does this sound like an Administration that's been aware of the risks from the outset, or a delusional one that only wants to hear good news? Of course, now we have "Grim Bush", who tells us ahead of time that things are going to look like they are getting worse in the future. And this is supposed to reassure us somehow. Hey, he's admitting that it's going to be tough, so when the 'surge' looks like it's a complete failure, that's how you'll know that everything is going according to plan. That's just Al-Qaeda trying to get us to 'surrender', so if anyone (besides Grim Bush) says that things are going badly, then they obviously are traitors who support Al-Qaeda and you shouldn't listen to anything they say.
Bush is now only speaking to the one-fourth of the electorate who still think he has some credibility left, and obviously judging from the neocon bloggers, they are lapping it up. The other three-fourths merely see him as a deluded, obsessive pawn dominated by others with an agenda they are afraid to openly admit to.

Bush Administration's irrelevance now painfully obvious

The Bush Administration has become so disconnected with reality, so profoundly arrogant and so isolated that it has become nothing more than an annoying obstacle that the world must sidestep around as it tries to fix the messes Bush makes.
Recently, the Decider Dude made another scary speech (see cartoon above) in which he once again made his pitch that Iraq is the" central front on the war on Terror", but this time he dug up old intelligence reports. Polls show that the majority of Americans aren't buying the Iraqi "central front" thesis, largely because the logic it's founded on is weak. Basically, it goes like this: "Terrorists are bad people. The people who are attacking us in Iraq are bad people. Therefore by killing the bad people in Iraq, we will get rid of bad people around the world. It's true because we say so." Now, it is true that the occupation of Iraq has been a big boost to Al-Qaeda, both in terms of fundraising and recruitment. It also allows Al-Qaeda to spruce up its image in the Islamic world by portraying themselves as defending Iraqis against foreign infidel troops, rather than as crazy murderers of innocents. This is hardly an endorsement of our policy of continuing the occupation, however. It's not as if there is some specific number of "terrorists" in Iraq that never changes, and if we can only kill off that number, then no more will take their place. It's also not like these "terrorists" all wear black hats and stand around twirling their handlebar moustaches in a sinister way to make picking them out in a crowd easier. And if we do drive them out of Iraq, they will simply go someplace else and do essentially the same thing there, so that's not any improvement. And lastly, having troops in Iraq does nothing to prevent terrorists from coming here.
If your local police chief placed every one of his officers on a single street corner and claimed that criminals would now flock to that corner to commit their crimes and thus be apprehended by the large police presence, you would probably label the chief as a simpleton. Yet this is the logical basis for Bush's "Iraqi central front" argument.
Up to now, however, Bush has countered this by implying that he is privy to intelligence reports that prove him right, but he can't share this secret information with us. So he made a special Decider decision and declassified some old intelligence reports to prove to sceptics that Iraq really is, in fact, the "Central Front in the War on Terror". And he made this daring public revelation to an audience of employees (Coast Guard) who are required to keep a straight face.
Here is that super-secret "proof", in a nutshell:
People who were tortured told their captors about two plots to attack targets in the U.S. In both cases, these 'plots' were merely in the concept stage and neither 'plot' had anything to do with Iraq. And there were also reports from Britain that have since been proven to be exaggerations, but which Bush presented as gospel truth. These 'plots' also had nothing to do with Iraq.
It is silly to have to say this, but simply because we have troops in Iraq does not mean that every terrorist plot that is disrupted is due to the presence of our troops in Iraq. In my police chief analogy, if two car thieves decide to go out for beers rather than steal cars parked miles away from the chief's selected corner, then this would be proof that his policy of placing all his forces on that corner was working.

Bush, however, seems to think that his point has been proven and we can all expect him to continue to make the case that the occupation of Iraq is about fighting terrorism, not refereeing a civil war. This, of course, is because a referee cannot "win", and Bush has, strangely, cast an occupation as something that can be 'won' or 'lost'. Doncha wanna win? Instead, he has miscast Al-Qaeda as equivalent to a regular army, which we can militarily defeat and thus win. Sadly, this characterisation has no basis in reality. There is no Al-Qaeda territory that we can take, there is no headquarters that can be overrun, there are no 'front lines', and there are no Al-Qaeda uniforms. The situation has far more in common with a law enforcement scenario, rather than a military battlefield. We would not call out the Army to 'defeat' the forces of tax fraud, for example. We would not portray criminals as having a central leadership, uniforms declaring themselves to be criminals, or a headquarters that must be stormed in order to 'defeat' all crime once and for all.
Yet this is what Bush's "central front" thesis is based upon - distortions of the truth. "The occupation is a war. Al-Qaeda is an army. Troops in Iraq keep plots in California from being carried out."
Meanwhile Al-Sadr is planning an end run by making Al-Maliki as irrelevant as Bush and getting an Iraqi demand for withdrawal passed in Parliament.
Meanwhile the Republicans are making a "Plan B" that consists of a 50% troop reduction if the 'surge' is officially determined to have failed.
Meanwhile the U.S. generals in Iraq are coming up with novel definitions of the word 'success' to use in their reports on the occupation.
All this while the Decider Dude rants on about stuff nobody believes in or cares about anymore.

Redefining the success of the 'surge'

From the Daily Telegraph, an honest look at how Bush defines "success" when it comes to the 'surge':

Mr Campbell, whose remarks may cause embarrassment to Downing Street and anger in Washington, said that the casualty figures for April - in which 1,500 civilians are believed to have been killed - provided no "encouraging" evidence.

Speaking on the record last week to a public audience at Chatham House, the London-based foreign-policy research institute, he said: "The evidence does not suggest that the surge is actually working, if reduction in casualties is a criterion. The figures in April were not encouraging."

In unusually candid comments, Mr Campbell also disclosed that American commanders had decided that the criteria for the "success" of the troop surge would be nothing more than a reduction in violence to the level prior to last year's al-Qaeda bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, which destroyed its golden dome.

The destruction of the shrine, one of the most important Shia sites in the world, led to a dramatic escalation in sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia factions, peaking at 3,500 deaths in September last year. Casualty figures had been running at 800 a month before that, a level that few would regard as anything approaching peace.

While the United States military has made little secret of its view that the bloodshed in Iraq can now only be contained, rather than stamped out altogether, the suggestion that 800 murders a month in the country would be a measure of success is an indication of how far the coalition has been forced to reign in its expectations.

Just like "victory" in Iraq keeps getting redefined, the "success" of the 'surge' is likewise just a matter of which definition is used. No matter what Iraq looks like in September, there should be no doubt that the 'surge' will be a success, simply because Bush will tell his military commanders that success is defined by whatever the situation is at that point.
Due to the results of recent votes in Congress, it's now clear that the 'surge' will last for the remainder of Bush's term. This also is an example in semantics, by changing the definition of the word "surge" to that of the word "escalation". So, after more than three years of thumbs-up, smiley-face assessments, it will turn out that two more years of a roughly 30% troop increase was all we needed to get us back where we started. At that point, more thumbs-up, smiley-faced assessments will be in order and Republicans will be able to blame whoever takes over after Bush. Republicans will hail Bush as a great military leader for using the 'surge' to get the back to the point where it was before the 'surge'.

You know, it's not a question of victory or defeat here. It's not as if we are fighting a conventional war or a regular army. We are essentially fighting social unrest and political impotence with crude force. There is no "social unrest" commander with a headquarters that we can go to and surrender. But Republicans keep casting the situation in Iraq as if it were a conventional war, precisely because a conventional war can be lost, and an occupation cannot be lost. Bush knows that Americans don't like the idea of "defeat", so a small segement continues to grudgingly support his failed policies to avoid it. We all want to see Good prevail over Evil, so we tell ourselves that there are clearly defined Bad Guys and clearly defined Good Guys. However, the truth is that a lot of the Bad Guys wear the uniforms of the Good Guys, and Al-Qaeda doesn't wear uniforms at all. And when anyone starts talking about the truth in Iraq, you can be sure that a Republican will accuse them of treason. It's kind of like blaming the people who dial 911 for the crimes that are committed, because they are somehow admitting that crime exists and therefore 'emboldening' criminals. Sadly, we are now dealing with an Administration that uses wishful thinking and semantics as the primary tools of leadership.

Sadrists not as dead as Bush's wishful thinking indicates

Bush, et al, keep writing off al-Sadr and talk about his 'splintered' Mahdi Army. This is just another fallacy in an unbroken series of optimistic assessments and wishful thoughts, and the U.S. media backs it up dutifully.
However, if we look at a news report from China we hear a different tune whistled:

Fierce Clashes also broke out overnight between Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al- Sadr in the southern city of Nassriyah, killing 10 people and wounding some 50 others, local police and official sources said on Wednesday.

"Ten people were killed in the fighting, and up to 50 others were wounded, including civilians and security members," Abdul Karim al-Uqiedy, deputy head of the local government told Xinhua by telephone.
A local police source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said that the fighting sparked Tuesday night after the Iraqi security forces detained a Sadr's Mahdi Army member who was accused of targeting U.S. and Iraqi forces with roadside bombs and mortars.
Groups of Mahdi's militants armed with machine-guns and rocket propelled grenades attacked the house of the local police commando chief, who was accused by the militants of detaining one of their comrades, the police said.
Residents of Nassriyah, some 375 km southeast of Baghdad, said that sporadic explosions and gunfire could be heard in the noon on Wednesday, whereas the streets in the city were deserted.
They said that several cars were charred on the Habboby Street in central city, where the government building located, and that many police guards of the building were either killed or injured.
Iraqi Army and police forces blocked the entrances of Nassriyah as they moved into the city to quell the violence, they added.

Oh, and something you would never see in the American press:

The latest violence came as a U.S.-led security crackdown entered its third month, which has not achieved substantial progress in neither reducing violence nor realizing national reconciliation between rival factions in Iraq.

What, no vague assertions of "signs of success" that are required here? And the 'surge' is in its third month, you say? But the Republicans say the 'surge' doesn't start until June! It's okay to take credit for any "success" the 'surge' might produce, but not the blame for any lack of success. Hmmm, so the foreign press isn't buying that, eh?

The myth of "some success" in Iraq

Republicans and Bush's ventrilioquist dummies in the military keep mentioning "signs of success" in Iraq, which are presumably due to the 'surge'. They keep it all very vague so that people who actually still look to these people as a credible source will not examine things too closely. The "signs of success" boil down to these two things:
- Anbar province, where tribal leaders have made statements that they will be taking action on their own against Al-Qaeda.
- A decline of death-squad killings ("sectarian killings" in Bush-speak) in Baghdad.

Before looking into each of these "signs", I would first point the significance underlying them.
Bush keeps hammering away at two points. These are that Iraq is not in a civil war, and that we are in Iraq to fight Al-Qaeda. When sectarian killings occur on a large scale, the White House speaks of Al-Qaeda and how we have to fight them "there" to keep from fighting them "here". When Al-Qaeda springs into the forefront, we hear about a decline of sectarian killings in a specific area. Back and forth it goes, so that we are always "winning" and it's always because of the 'surge'.
Okay, now about those "signs". The first one, involving Anbar, has nothing to do with the 'surge'. In fact, it proves the failure of the 'surge', the sham government, and the illusory Iraqi Army that is going to "stand up" so that we can "stand down". After four and a half years, the U.S. military and the Iraqi military has failed to make much of a dent in Al-Qaeda in Anbar. So now, an essentially vigilante force is taking action, or at least issuing press releases that they are taking action. And this is an improvement? How does this new 'tribal' force distinguish between Al-Qaeda and ordinary citizens? We have seen this before in Baghdad, where 'helpful' Iraqis hand over the names of romantic and business rivals (or merely people they disagree with) as "terrorists" to the authoritites. The prisons run by Iraqi Interior Ministry are, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than torture centres. The result is that the guy who is dating some 'helpful' Iraqi's ex-girlfriend gets thrown into prison and tortured into admitting he is a 'terrorist", and supporters of the war back here point to this as a sign of success against Al-Qaeda. But more importantly, what does this have to do with the 'surge'? Iraqis taking matters into their own hands, rather than letting the Iraqi or U.S. military handle it, is somehow due to an increase in troops? It sounds like it's more of an acknowledgement of failure of our efforts. Lastly, regardless of how many putative "terrorists" do get nabbed by this tribal effort, the fact remains that the government in Anbar is a virtual no-show, that the economic and security infrastructure is a disaster, and that getting rid of putative "al-Qaeda" won't solve these issues. A toilet free of Al-Qaeda is still a toilet.
The second "sign", the decline of sectarian killings, also has nothing to do with the 'surge'. Al-Sadr has simply told his Mahdi Army to stand down temporarliy while his party tries to gain with politics what it has failed to gain with its death squads. And things aren't working too well in that regard, as I've pointed out before. Just this past week we've seen groups of 200 or more carrying out killings with impunity. Bush has pinned his hopes on the weak al-Maliki as a counterbalance to the Sadrists, and even al-Maliki isn't the lapdog that Bush hoped he would be. Instead of breaking things down into phony "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys", we should instead be looking at things as "separatists" and "nationalists". The separatists are, ironically, the side that Bush backs. They want to split the country into three parts, and they also are eager to pass the Hydrocarbon Law so that they can start raking in the money. The Hydrocarbon law was written by the multinational oil companies and it gives them complete control over the Iraqi oil while handing out a cut to the Iraqis. Of course, the oil companies get to keep the books, so they determine how much the Iraqis actually get. And once a separate Kurdistan is declared, Turkey will invade and take the oil anyway. The nationalists are the ones who want to keep Iraq together, but they oppose the Hydrocarbon Law and don't like the foreign occupation. This is a classic civil war scenario: separatists and nationalists. However, if we openly admit this, then we will (rightly) be seen as referees in a civil war, rather than as fighting Al-Qaeda. All Al-Qaeda wants out of this is to stir up Sunnis into killing Shiites, and killing as many U.S. troops as they can. They aren't out for political control.

So, both of these "signs of success" are really false and have nothing to do with the 'surge'.
Oddly nobody in the Bush Administration sees the recent spread of 'sectarian killings' to Kurdistan, an area that's previously been mostly peaceful, as a bad sign. Again, as always, the Republican math is More Deaths=the 'surge' is working, and Less Deaths=the 'surge' is working. See, we just keep "winning". As things get worse, that's just seen as a sign that the proverbial "Bad Guys" are desperate and that we're "turning the corner". Haven't we heard that before?

Republicans take Mixon's remarks the wrong way

Republican bloggers, such as this one, see the recent remarks by Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. "Randy" Mixon that he needs more troops in Diyala as some kind of proof that the surge is working. These guys are really desperate for good news, so they have to spin it themselves. NBC reported on Mixon's remarks, in which he basically said he was being overrun. However, this key phrase was included in the report:

“Ironically, the recent surge into Baghdad drove insurgents and terrorist out of the capital and into Diyala province…”

Ok, there we have it, kids. Proof the surge is working. Yep, because the Bad Guys (whoever they are) are moving out of Baghdad and into another area where the heat isn't on, that means it's all worthwhile. This is pretty much what Petraeus himself has warned about: You apply pressure in one area, and the problem moves to another area (his "balloon" analogy). This is good news? It means that all we have to do is apply the 'surge' to the whole country and the "terrorists" will go someplace else. Where? Afghanistan, maybe? The U.S? Well, let's not use our critical thinking skills when we have a perfect opportunity to rail against "liberal media bias". It's taken us five months to scrape the troops up for this surge and we still don't even have all of them, but the blogger geniuses think we have 5 times more troops around that we can spare to duplicate this 'succcess' throughout Iraq. And let's not look at American troop casualties from the 'surge', either.
See, we just keep "winning". Of course, in the meantime Mixon is unhappy, with 61 casualties this year so far. And he's been asking for more troops since September, so if we have all of these extra troops around, why has he been waiting? Maybe Mixon is a traitor? Why else would he say things that 'embolden' the enemy? Why does this Major General hate America? Those are the kind of issues the Republicans want the media to explore, while showing lots of flags and eagles, too.
But let's look at the rest of Mixon's statement, rather than focussing on what NBC said:

"The level of violence began to increase before the surge," Mixon said, referring to the Baghdad buildup. "It has increased, of course, during the surge … [because] we are sure that there are elements, both Sunni extremist and Shia extremist, that have moved out of Baghdad."

Okay, so the situation was getting worse before the 'surge', he says. Now it's continuing to get worse. Mixon's casualties have tripled over last year's totals and we're not even halfway through the year yet. That sounds like success to Republicans. In fact, Diyala province is one of the major "success stories" pitched by neocon bloggers, like this one. Mixon also called the local government "non-functional" and the central government "ineffective", which is undoubtedly another mark of 'success" for Republicans. According to the LA Times, "Mixon was withering in his criticism of the Iraqi government, saying it was hamstrung by bureaucracy and compromised by corruption and sectarian discord, making it unable to assist U.S. forces in Diyala." Do those sound like problems that would be solved by more combat troops? Because that's all Bush has up his sleeve: more troops or less troops. Take your pick. This is what we get for $450 billion and counting.
The recent decline of sectarian violence has not come from the increase of U.S. troops, but rather from Al-Sadr making a political gesture to his foreign supporters (e.g. King Abdullah) to try to get a political resolution from the Iraqi Parliament. The Bush Administration, however, is putting al-Maliki on the spot to keep this kind of resolution from occurring, so once Al-Sadr gives up on his political options and turns the "violence faucet" back on, we'll see a flood of sectarian death. And this flood will probably come in the weeks before September when Bush will be making his pitch about "success" in Iraq. And the decline in sectarian death has been about the only bright spot in this "surge'. Bush's ill-considered gamble to force Iraqi politicians into doing his bidding will instead backfire into the collapse of the 'surge'. By then, too, thousands more Iraqis will have been through the torture centres that the Interior Ministry calls "prisons", and they won't come out whistling a happy tune, either.
The sad truth is that the surrounding countries are really trying quite hard to bring about a stabilisation in Iraq, but Bush's short-sighted agenda and penchant for throwing troops at every problem is seriously undermining their efforts. But we can always blame it on the "liberal media" and "surrenderists", can't we?

Norm Coleman looks to 11/08

Excerpt of AP story from Anne Flaherty:

Baghdad’s ability to sell members like Coleman, R-Minn., and Chambliss, R-Ga., on the war effort is critical if the Iraqi government wants U.S. troops to stay. Coleman in recent months has become deeply skeptical of the president’s decision to send additional troops to Iraq and says patience on the war in general is limited.

Coleman, Chambliss and Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., who met separately with Saleh, will be up for re-election next year — facing voters who have grown tired of a war in its fifth year and that has killed more than 3,380 troops. While Republicans have been reluctant to intervene, many say President Bush has until September to tell if the troop buildup in Iraq is working before they demand another approach.

Ah, Norm, the breeze is blowing and you're drifting right along with it, aren't you? It's odd how it took this long for you to become concerned, though. Up until just recently you were one of those ventriloquist dummies who said that leaving Iraq meant that the "terrorists" win.

When this report talks about "Baghdad's ability to sell" the 'surge' to fools like Norm Coleman, they really mean the Bush Administration's ability to keep marginally loyal Republicans from bolting. So (Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham) Saleh just decided to meet with a bunch of nervous Republican Congressdroids on his own, eh? The Deputy Prime Minister of a puppet Prime Minister who has virtually no power and whose paycheck and position ultimately is in the hands of the Bush Administration gets a crazy idea to travel to the U.S. and talk to politicians...but mostly Republican politicians. The minute Saleh stops doing the bidding of the Bush Administration is when Saleh loses his job or when his security "slips up" and he takes his place at the morgue. But... but.. he's Iraqi! It's just a coincidence that everything he says sounds like it was approved by Bush ahead of time. Wow, I'm certainly fooled.

Norm, face it: your master's only Iraq plan was to install Challabi as some kind of dictator in a sham election and have Challabi act as a U.S.-controlled puppet. And you went along with this because to think independently means you lose your spot on the winning team. So, Norm, if you are no longer taking marching orders from Cheney, then who is your new master? And if you still are Cheney's ventriloquist dummy, then what's up with the "nervous" act? Is something going to happen between now and September that suddenly makes Cheney less of a genius hero for you?
Norm Coleman had better figure out before September whether he's going to betray his masters in the White House or his constituency in Minnesota. This choreographed act with Saleh doesn't gain him any cover at all.
It's funny how his "patience" on the war is limited by impending election, though. It's almost as if he didn't have any confidence in his master at all, and is confused because they stopped sending him Talking Points or something.

Disaster in Iraq, disaster at home

The big buzz now is about September, when Republicans are allegedly going to be expected to show some progress in Iraq with the surge. However, the real story will be here at home by that time, and if the Republicans will be in any shape to spin the inevitable foreign disaster while dealing with the domestic disaster.
Nearly every week now, someone in the Administration is resigning or having new investigations launched into their activities. The pace will only increase, and presumed loyalists will begin to spill their guts now that they see that the Adminstration's chief strategy seems to be scapegoating their own minions. Yeah, Abu Gharaib was really just all about a few bad enlisted personnel; no officers and certainly no White House staff, thank you very much. The firings of US Attorneys General were all plotted by out-of-control staffers with no involvement by a merely bewildered Gonzalez. The faulty Iraq intelligence seems to have been created by anyone who ceases to pay lip service to the Bush Lie Doctrine. The Katrina response was all poor Mr. Brown's fault, and not the people who hired a marginal stable manager to handle national disaster co-ordination.
And, strangely, the generals who were wonderful, competent, and experienced when Bush placed them in charge of Iraqi operations somehow became pathetic, clueless traitors when they stopped saying what Bush wanted to hear. Even now, Republicans who swore by every word Tenet said a few years ago now curse his name and denounce him as the cause of the baseless WMD intelligence, or at least until the next scapegoat comes along.
And they honestly think that nobody notices this pattern, or that even those that actually believe the scapegoats are responsible blame the Administration for failing to oversee the situations properly. Yep, the Bush Adminstration is the victim of a conspiracy of incompetent, disloyal, and devious rascals that worked their treachery right under the noses of the higher-ups without their knowledge. They're just victims, I guess. Uh-huh.
Oh yes, and it's also about the hate. Don't forget about the hate. Democrats are so obsessed with hatred of Bush that they somehow mysteriously created the circumstances for these bad apples to work their sinister schemes. And we all know that Republicans are mild, reasonable people who don't get all crazy at the mention of the name "Clinton" or became absolutely unglued in their Quest for "Truth" when it came to the Decider's predecessor. They don't throw around the word "treason" lightly or question people's patriotism for merely disagreeing with the President. Certainly their fundamentalist Christian doctrines are founded only on love and they feel no hatred toward any non-Judeo-Christians or gays, etc. And if they do hate, well, then it's completely understandable and justified because... well, because then it's in their interests to hate. Nothin' wrong with that.
Anyway, in the next four months enough is going to blow about the Bush Adminstration that the surge will be a minor problem. By that time, Petraeus, the hero and darling of the Neo-Cons, will have lost favour by contradicting something the Commander Guy said, anyway. The scant political capital that the Republicans have left will have been squandered on a largely symbolic "I'm the Boss" showdown over Iraq Appropriations.
As I said before, by September the definition of "success" in Iraq will have been drained of any real meaning and will essentially be "success is whatever the Decider says is success" and it won't look pretty. Republicans will crow about "victory" as Iraq becomes even worse than it is now. All hail the new dictator Allawi! Okay, so we won't have brought democracy, stability, rainbows or puppy dogs to Iraq like we planned, and Iraq really isn't our ally in the War on Terror, and we didn't get the oil, either....but we won! The Decider said so! And since he's the President, he's infallible and any hint of disagreement with Him is treason. Besides, you want to win, right? Just don't ask any questions and cheer when you're supposed to cheer and we can all claim a great victory! Otherwise you have to admit we lost and that doesn't poll well.
The reason Bush and his fiends will continue on while their Administration collapses, their war collapses, their party's election hopes collapse, etc. is because they never plan for anything but the best possible outcome. They will go down in profound disgrace and haul all of their loyalists with them, still proudly confident that they will win the day. And there will be much rejoicing...but not by them.

Analysis of Bush's radio address - fear and lies

The Decider tells another scary story:

If radicals and terrorists emerge from this battle with control of Iraq, they would have control of a nation with massive oil reserves, which they could use to fund their dangerous ambitions and spread their influence. The al Qaeda terrorists who behead captives or order suicide bombings would not be satisfied to see America defeated and gone from Iraq. They would be emboldened by their victory, protected by their new sanctuary, eager to impose their hateful vision on surrounding countries, and eager to harm Americans.

The lack of logic here is staggering.

1) 'If we leave, Al-Qaeda will take over Iraq.' Okay, now who are we paying to produce the intelligence reports that support this? First off, Al-Qaeda in Iraq is not the same Al-Qaeda that attacked us on September 11. It is a terrorist group, but has nothing to do with Osama. Zawahiri merely took the name as a "franchise" while remaining independent from Al-Qaeda. The Pentagon has already said this. Second, there are only about a thousand of these Iraqi Al-Qaeda 'franchisees' in Iraq. Again, this is the Pentagon's estimate. They have never expressed an aim to take over the country, and no sober assessment has ever indicated that this is their aim. Their aim is to foment chaos, and keep American troops in Iraq to kill them and make it appear to the Islamic world that we intend to make Iraq a colony. Even in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda never tried to take over the country. There are Al-Qaeda in dozens of countries, but we don't invade them or tell scary stories about them taking over there. In fact, we call these countries our allies.

2) 'Leaving while Al-Qaeda is in Iraq would be defeat'. Yeah, well why does Bush say that "victory" could be defined as merely a reduction of Al-Qaeda attacks then? Are we now seriously telling Americans that we plan on killing every single last member of Al-Qaeda, as if they wore some kind of uniform or something? When did Iraqis vote on making their country the place for foreigners to fight it out?

3) 'If we leave, Al-Qaeda will be eager to impose their hateful vision on other countries'. Well, in the eyes of the nearly all of the surrounding countries, we are the ones whose hateful vision they are worried about. They can handle Al-Qaeda just fine, but they are worried about the U.S. using Iraq as permanent military base to interfere with their agendas. In fact, there are lots and lots of Iraqi refugees in these countries to remind everyone there what a great 'service' the American occupation is to the region.

3) 'We can't let Al-Qaeda get control of Iraq's oil reserves'. Hey, didn't we hand over sovereignty of the country to Iraq? Al-Qaeda doesn't have any seats in the Iraqi Parliament, nor any significant electoral support to speak of. Actually, The Iraqi Oil Law that we are ramming down the Iraqis' throats pretty much guarantees that we will be ones geting the control of their oil and using the money for our own ends. Those ends have very little to do with making Iraqis happy.

4) 'The presence of our troops limits Al-Qaeda's influence'. Actually, it's the opposite. Al-Qaeda presents itself to the Sunnis of the world as the primary defenders of Iraqi Sunnis from the foreign infidels. While the Iraqi Sunnis may not be lapping that up, the Sunnis in other countries certainly are. And they are greatly helped by Bush's base spreading anti-Islamic propaganda. Designed to encourage non-Muslims to wipe out Islam, instead it pretty much 'emboldens' Muslims worldwide to take Al-Qaeda seriously when they say that America is out to destroy Islam and kill all Muslims. Al-Qaeda is Sunni group, of course, but Shia are offended by the presence of foreign infidels at their holy shrines. The longer we stay there, the better Al-Qaeda looks and the more pissed off Shia worldwide get.

5) 'This is a battle'. No, actually we declared the war over. Now it's an occupation. Look up the word. When we occupied Japan after WW2 we didn't refer to it as a battle. Same with Germany. This is an 'enemy' that doesn't control any territory, has no regular armed forces, no government directing them. They can leave whenever they want and we can do nothing. We don't even know most of their names, they wear no uniform and appear to be identical to the populace we are defending. They are not after control of the government and have little popular support among the populace. They like to kill our troops, though, so we oblige them by making them readlily available in large numbers.
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We lost the moral high ground with Iraqis when Abu Gharaib came out. Iraqis are beaten, humiliated, lied to, or otherwise victimised by either our troops or our contractors all the time. These people don't just smile about it and shrug it off. That's not the cultural norm. At best we are seen as a necessary evil, with more and more Iraqis leaving the "necessary" part out as sectarian forces and Al-Qaeda work their magic on the populace. Even if we were saints, we are no longer seen as the good guys by the people there.

Here's a link to the entire radio address

You might also notice no mention of "democracy" in the speech.

The goal of the new strategy he is implementing is to help the Iraqis secure their capital, so they can make progress toward reconciliation and build a free nation that respects the rights of its people, upholds the rule of law, and fights extremists alongside the United States in the war on terror. This strategy is still in its early stages, and Congress needs to give General Petraeus’ plan a chance to work.

Ah, yes, Petraeus. Hey, it's not his plan. This is the plan that Bush handed him - a last resort strategy- and he agreed to give it a try. I really hope that Petraeus corrects this little error before he ends up like Tenet. Just because Congress confirmed him, doesn't mean that the guy has magical powers. He's been given a lousy plan, and he's the best guy to execute the lousy plan. If it wasn't him, Bush would have sent some craven toady that could care less about the troops under his command. Let's not let Bush blame Petraeus when this surge ultimately fails, nor let Bush invoke his name to silence those who rightly say the lousy plan is, indeed, lousy.
Notice that the goal is now "progress" toward noble ends, not the achievement of those ends. Also notice that Bush is not saying that we are any closer to making those goals reality.
How much time do we have to give "Petraeus'" plan to work? The Great Decider does not say. Twenty years? A thousand?
...And the Republican Presidential candidates all backed this vague plan that's based on lies, distortions, and fear-mongering. If the surge fails come October, these idiots have absolutely no wiggle room at all. And there will be months and months of tape with these idiots making lame excuses, empty threats, and bogus predictions. Treason. It's the last card they can play, and the one most likely to make them look crazy.

Republicans say "Give the Surge a Chance"

From Fox News, we have the latest (5/6) brave Republican rhetoric from John Boehner (House Republican Leader):

“We don’t even have all of the 30,000 additional troops in Iraq yet, so we’re supporting the president. We want this plan to have a chance of succeeding,” he said.

“Over the course of the next three to four months, we’ll have some idea how well the plan’s working. Early signs are indicating there is clearly some success on a number of fronts,” he said.

"A number of fronts", eh? Isn't zero a number?
So why aren't all of the additional troops in Iraq yet? It's been about four months now that Bush has been promising big things from this "surge". If this plan is so wonderful and foolproof, why the wait?

The answer is that the entire surge strategy is really nothing more than a political stall for domestic consumption, and that we don't actually have all of those troops to spare in the first place. Bush is calling on imaginary legions, and the neocons love it!
So now the new date is June 1 to "start the clock", which was originally supposed to be six weeks. That would be July 13. And this is giving Bush the five months prior to this that he was claiming the surge was in effect and producing success "on a number of fronts", but which is now "no fair" to include as "on the clock". Okay. But watch for Republicans to say they had their fingers crossed when they said "six weeks".
By the time the clock is actually started, we'll see Republicans and their ventriloquist dummies in the military say that six months of "surge" is what any sane and patriotic person knows they really meant. This pushes us into December.

Either that, or Bush's definition of "victory" will have been changed to mean "the ability of Iraq's Parliament to convene in the Green Zone". Watch Republicans say that "nobody can deny this is a great step forward", even though they've been doing that for years.
I'm not quite sure if it's sad or scary to realise that the majority of the Republicans' supporters believe that they will all be swept away in the Rapture before Bush leaves office anyway.

In any case, it looks like Boehner thinks the surge will last at least until early September, which is the date that Petraeus has been tossing around. This makes the surge an eight month operation, at best. That's sounding more like an escalation than a "surge". The "surge" was billed as a relatively short operation that would give the Iraqi government time to stabilise and deal with the civil war. Now it's become some kind of major escalation to wipe out Al-Qaeda once and for all, except that Bush is now saying that a certain level of Al-Qaeda violence is acceptable in his new definition of "victory". Okay, so now were stretching our military to its utter limits in an effort to reduce Al-Qaeda's impact in Iraq. If Bush tried sellling that plan back in January, I doubt that even Boehner would've bit.
We still have no hard date from any Republican or military spokesman telling us when we can definitely say the "surge" has failed. This is not a timetable that "our enemies" would have to wait out, since Bush clearly is going to keep the surge going until he leaves office. It's just a benchmark by which we say if Bush's plan failed or succeeded. The fact that the man can't even give us a straight answer on that score speaks volumes.
Faith and optimism do not negate reality. If I really, really believe that I can drive 100 miles on an empty gas tank, when my car is sitting on the roadside, my faith will not fill that tank back up. We've tried crossing our fingers. We've tried rabbit's feet. We've tried clicking our heels together. Now we're just simply waiting for a miracle and calling that leadership.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that in the same Fox news interview John Boehner said in no uncertain terms that there is no civil war in Iraq. It's just us fighting terrorists. So those sectarian forces that Bush and Petraeus have been bragging about defeating with the surge are really non-existent? These guys better get their lies straight.

Neocon spin

Looking at the neocon blogs is a mind-numbing experience. The hypocrisy and delusion is palpable.
Democrats are described by an assortment of hateful names, the 70% of the country that opposes the Iraq occupation are cowards, traitors, and 'surrenderists', and withdrawal fom Iraq is somehow equated with killing our soldiers. Sadly, the Republican zealots that still support the occupation are themselves the hateful ones.

Sources: Their sources of information are always in the pay of or under the command of the President. They quote the President himself as if he is some godlike expert. Yes, the fact the President supports his own policies is some kind of 'proof' in their minds. Bush is not big on facts, he's big on faith. So when a guy who's not big on facts makes assertions, you really have to take those assertions with a grain of salt. Military spokesmen are also a regular supplier of supportive quotes for the neocons. Just a reminder: the President is Commander-in-Chief and is the boss of these military spokesmen. And they are spokesmen, not experts. They just deliver the message they are told to. They don't provide analysis and their job is not to think independently of the President's agenda. Lastly, actively-serving generals or other active-duty officers round out the font of truth for Republicans. Again, if these guys say anything contrary to the party line, they will be severely punished and they most certainly know this.
Remember, we had the President, military spokesmen, and active-duty officers assuring us that Vietnam was either going great or that leaving would mean the end of the Free World up until we actually did withdraw. They are no more reliable a source than ventriloquist's dummies.

Motive: The Democrat's motive is always to destroy America, in their minds. They, in contrast, want to establish an Empire where the U.S. calls the shots, arranges everything for it's own benefit at the expense of other countries, and quashes any country that says what we don't want to hear. That is their definition of patriotism: we rule the world. We can only be 'safe' when we control everything. This is not practical or even attainable, even if we draft everyone under 40 and manage to rebuild our manufacturing sector and avoid bankruptcy. "My way or the highway" may have been temporarily feasible 50 years ago when we were the undisputed industrial leader and the rest of the planet was either very backward or in a postwar shambles. That's reality, not cowardice or treason. The Soviet Union was defeated primarily on an economic basis, and at a huge cost to us financially, mostly by an economic boycott and refusal to accept their currency. The huge cost would pay off in the long term by saving the money that went into the "war". However, we just found new wars and new enemies. Our industrial might has been outsourced nowadays and our major economic leverage comes by way of being the default currency. The euro is now looking like a better alternative to the dollar as the reserve currency, largely due to the enormous strings attached to the dollar. The more we try to intimidate other countries monetarily, the better the euro looks to them as a reserve currency.

Terror: Al-Qaeda is the ultimate bogeyman. If they say something that supports the President's view, then they are a sterling source, but if they say something that doesn't back the Republican scenario, then they are untrustworthy liars and schemers. Criticising the occupation 'emboldens' them, but having hatriots making public statements that say the U.S.' goal should be to wipe out Islam somehow puts Al-Qaeda in their place by showing them we "mean business". Ask yourself which scenario is more likely to push a young Muslim into the arms of radical Islamists:
1) "Here is a statement by an American who says that the occupation of Iraq should end."
2) "Here is a statement by an American who says they want to kill you simply for being a Muslim."
Yes, in the minds of Republicans, statement #2 is not only patriotic, but it will scare that young Muslim into bowing to the will of his/her American masters. Sheesh.

And of course, to the neocon, everything I've posted here is defeatist, treasonous garbage largely because it recognises that there are limits on American power.

The Decider, in his own words

A few excerpts from The Decider's speech 11-30-05
This was before 11-06 when Bush had a mysterious change of heart and began to use the lack of progress in Iraq as the new justification for our involvement. Back when he made this speech he was using the tremendous progress in Iraq to justify our involvement. The reason for the mysterious change of heart was the election results, no doubt.
So, when Bush sees his policies as working, that means we have to stay in Iraq. Likewise, when Bush's policies fail to work, we have to stay in Iraq. See a pattern here?

Bush: Advancing the cause of freedom and democracy in the Middle East begins with ensuring the success of a free Iraq. Freedom's victory in that country will inspire democratic reformers from Damascus to Tehran, and spread hope across a troubled region, and lift a terrible threat from the lives of our citizens. By strengthening Iraqi democracy, we will gain a partner in the cause of peace and moderation in the Muslim world, and an ally in the worldwide struggle against -- against the terrorists.

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Yeah, I'm sure that people from 'Damascus to Teheran' are looking at Iraq and saying "Hey, wouldn't it be nice if we could be more like them". And the Shia majority in Iraq sees Iran as their ally, not the U.S. Also, you would have to be delusional to see Iraqi democracy as 'strengthening'. The Iraqi government is instead dominated by the two main parties involved in the civil war (which Bush says is not a civil war). It's an open secret that as soon as the U.S. does withdraw from Iraq, that Turkey will invade Kurdistan with the nice shiny military we have built up for them. How does this play out in the "ally" scenario? Will we defend our Iraqi ally against our Turkish ally? Or is all this 'ally' talk a load of crap that really means we install a government in Iraq who says what we tell them to say and does what we command?

Bush: As we make progress toward victory, Iraqis will take more responsibility for their security, and fewer U.S. forces will be needed to complete the mission. America will not abandon Iraq. We will not turn that country over to the terrorists and put the American people at risk. Iraq will be a free nation and a strong ally in the Middle East -- and this will add to the security of the American people.
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Again, Iraq is not looking anything like an ally at this point. And now, in May '07, the old Decider Dude says that more troops are needed, not fewer. And those Iraqi troops that were supposed to "stand up" turned out to be more of the problem than the solution, because their primary loyalties were to the sectarian militias. And somehow, as the situation has deteriorated in Iraq since this speech, we haven't seen a corresponding increase in danger here in the U.S. - Are we supposed to continue this war until everyone in the world who doesn't like us is killed? Is that what Congress meant when they 'authorised' this war? Why does Bush get to decide what Congress intended by their authorisation?
The truth is that our strongest defence against a radical Iran was Saddam, as bad as he was. If we want to frame this in terms of U.S. security, then that would be the primary concern. A weak central Iraqi government, in a shattered nation with its own armed forces at war with itself, led by Shia who see Iran as their natural ally, is not a scenario painting Iraq as a bulwark against Iran and its aims.

Bush: And we should not fear the debate in Washington. It's one of the great strengths of our democracy that we can discuss our differences openly and honestly -- even at times of war. Your service makes that freedom possible. And today, because of the men and women in our military, people are expressing their opinions freely in the streets of Baghdad, as well.
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Okay, so how is it that now anyone who disagrees with Bush is a traitor, and debate is the biggest fear of the Republicans? How is it that "the debate in Washington" is now not a sign of the freedom that those in the military have made possible, but seen as akin to aggression against the troops? Why are Republicans trying to undermine what their Great Decider has stated to be "one of the great strengths of our democracy"?
Will the Decider please decide which Decider is the Real Decider?
Of course, now Bush has simply defined "victory" as a decrease in sectarian violence, and doesn't really talk about the "strong ally" (or ally, period), or about the shining democracy that will make dictators across the Middle East tremble. Heck, we don't even care about car bombings, unemployment, a deadlocked Parliament, or refugees in the new picture of "success". Robert Gates has even gone so far as to suggest that Iraqis kicking us out would be considered "victory".
I wish that the Democrats would point out that Bush's "hang tough" act really consists of him lowering the bar for what is considered victory while stalling for his lowered standards to be acheived. And he can't even make that work.