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“The more successful we are, the more troops can return home.”
The cornerstone of Bush’s latest Iraq “plan,” laid out in his prime-time speech Thursday, was reiterated in his radio address yesterday: “return on success.” (Mr. Bush’s spin team is seriously lacking in the waning days of his would-be reign.)
That plan is, of course, playing out the clock. That plan is telling the soldiers they can return to their homes when they achieve success, but gives them no hope of finding that elusive goal. To make that goal even more unattainable, Bush provides no definition of what success is. He just tells them that reinforcing troops will be pulled out, stretching the remaining forces even thinner, bringing them that much closer to the breaking point.
And yet there he forces them to stay, until they succeed. At something. He tells their families and those of us back home, essentially, that until our troops figure out how to fix this mess, then they just have to stay there and tough it out. Because it’s his war and he’ll keep it going as long as he wants, consequences (and body bags) be damned.
For 1600 days since “Mission Accomplished,” and through the loss of at least 3,781 dutiful American lives, Bush has been a petulant commander in chief playing army men, as if those 3,781 men and women and their fellow soldiers were so many toy soldiers. He has proven unable to recognize the quagmire staring him in the face, refusing the advice of his military advisors going into Iraq resulting in this gawd-awful mess, and refusing the advice of the Iraq study group in January resulting in this pointless and failed escalation.
And today he has the gall to tell the men and women in Iraq that they will just have to be there until they do better, but he doesn’t have any plan for helping them do just that. If that’s not a hostage situation, I don’t know what is.
A note to our leaders in Congress. As with a petulant pre-adolescent, there’s no “negotiating” with Bush. He’s not going to bend to your will unless you give him no other option. In other words, don’t give him his money for this war without a deadline for its ending.
In an attempt to inject some life into his dying presidential campaign, John McCain has embarked on a “No Surrender” bus tour around the country, where he is attempting the rather neat trick of distancing himself from George Bush while wholeheartedly embracing the “Petraeus Report.” You can understand why he retired the “Straight Talk Express.”
At stop after stop, McCain:
…pays tribute to Gen. David Petraeus and the report the general issued about progress in Iraq.
…he has seized on Petraeus’ report as a validation not only of the so-called surge strategy in Iraq but also of McCain’s argument, made long before the White House came to the same conclusion, that victory in Iraq required many more troops there.
He lauds Petraeus, portraying him as a hero to cheering crowds — “thank God America is blessed with that kind of leadership”
So, let’s do a quick review of what David Petraeus, the Savior of Baghdad, had to report: That sure, the Iraqi government failed to meet any of the key benchmarks that were the reason for the so-called surge, and even though upward of 16,000 Iraqis have been killed in the past eight months, violence is down because of the location of the bullets in their heads, so it was a success and we can start to bring our troops home. Never mind that those announced withdrawals were a foregone conclusion, we’ve turned another corner in Iraq. And this is what McCain is now endorsing. Apparently McCain has forgotten his remarks before the Armed Services Committee in January, when he said:
The other elements of the President’s strategy are also critical. The Iraqi government must meet new benchmarks, including a reconciliation process for insurgents and Baathists, more equitable distribution of government resources, sharing oil revenue with the entire Iraqi population, and holding provincial elections that will bring Sunnis into government.
Critical until they failed to materialize? Because providing the “breathing space” for those benchmarks was the mission, right? And what did McCain say about completing the mission when he spoke in front of the American Enterprise Institute?
The deployment also needs to be sustained. The presence of additional brigades should be tied to completion of their mission rather than to some arbitrary deadline. The worst of all worlds would be a small, short surge of US forces…A short surge would have all the drawbacks associated with greater deployments, including increased US casualties.
So, first he endorsed the surge, as long as the additional troops stayed until the critical benchmarks were met. And now he endorses a timed end to the surge without the benchmarks being met, even though he said that would lead to increased U.S. casualties. Apparently that’s a “small price” to pay if it helps him get elected.
It was just over eight months ago that George Bush announced his latest strategy for victory in Iraq. And so he sent in an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to curb the unending violence so the Maliki government could have the “breathing room” needed to pass key legislation, at which point Al-Qaeda would run for the hills and the Iraqi people would drop their guns, hold hands, and sing kumbaya. But as the violence continues unabated, with the Maliki government on the verge of collapse, and with the date of the Petraeus White House report on the progress of the “surge” fast approaching, that fairy tale is getting a bit harder to peddle to an increasingly skeptical public, so naturally it’s time for significant political developments:
Iraq’s top Shi’ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political leaders announced on Sunday they had reached consensus on some key measures seen as vital to fostering national reconciliation.
Well hallelujah, the surge is working! Which caused the White House to immediately break out the champagne and declare this to be, “an important symbol,” which causes any thinking person to put down their glass and read the article very carefully. And what does this so-called breakthrough really mean?
The five leaders representing Iraq’s major political communities …. affirmed the principle of collective leadership to help deal with the many challenges faced by Iraq.
So, the five leaders have reached a “consensus” on a “road map” to reform de-Baathification laws and to release an unspecified number of detainees being held without charge. Oh, and they also endorsed a draft law for oil revenue sharing. Now that is huge news, just as it was when they made the same announcement in February and in July. But they aren’t revealing any details, perhaps remembering that the last time Maliki announced a breakthrough like this, the deal fell through the next day.
And while a story like this certainly plays into the White House fantasy of military and political gains in Iraq, it can’t be overlooked that it also benefits the embattled Maliki. After all, this is a man who heads a government that nearly half of the cabinet ministers are boycotting. A government who recently saw the largest Sunni bloc withdraw, and whose largest Shiite bloc, the group whose support got Maliki elected, has:
…threatened to bring criminal charges against Maliki, who they said was personally responsible for a U.S. raid in Baghdad’s Shoala neighborhood that they say killed 20 people, including women and children…Maliki “is commander in chief of the Iraq forces and upon him lies the responsibility of protecting civilians,” said Nassar al Rubaie, the head of the Sadrist bloc in parliament. “We see the Iraqi government has weakened and submitted to the occupation … It’s comparable to the bloody regime of Saddam.”
And of course there is the well-funded and publicized PR campaign by Ayad Allawi to get his old job back. Throw in the increasing number of calls for his ouster by prominent American politicians and you can see why it was time for such a “significant political development.” One that will no doubt rank right up there with the last throes and mission accomplished.
The Bush administration is preparing to release a new report on Iraq. And the word is good!
The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in carrying out the new American strategy in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress, according to several administration officials.
Gee whiz, pop! Half of the benchmarks at satisfactory is almost enough to score a… well, it’s still an F, but it’s a high F. How did we make this miracle recovery?
The administration’s decision to qualify many of the political benchmarks will enable it to present a more optimistic assessment than if it had provided the pass-fail judgment sought by Congress when it approved funding for the war this spring.
Get that? The Bush administration has decided to grade the war on a curve. No longer will they be subject to the prison of actual facts. Okay, so they never believed in facts, but why take anything like an objective score when you can apply a layer of sweet, sweet fudge factor?
And what about those the other half of the benchmarks, the ones that keep us from almost coming in sight of a hint of a corner? Well, suppose someone was to invade your nation, slaughter a few hundred thousand of your people, and reduce your cities to rubble. You’d like that, right? Of course you would. But then, you’re not an ungrateful Iraqi. Those failing benchmarks? That’s not Bush’s fault.
But the report also acknowledges that some military benchmarks have not been met, including improvements in the ability and political neutrality of the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government. Even in some areas where the report will cite progress, the officials in Washington said the document would acknowledge that the overall goal of political reconciliation remained elusive and would chide the Iraqis for failing to take advantage of the presence of more American troops to take more far-reaching steps.
Still, the administration does say that they want to give the Iraqis incentives to “improve their grades.”
If the Iraqis want to improve, all they have to do is learn from us. The new report includes tons of colorful graphs and nice charts explaining how things are improving. See how the administration is now splitting murders in Iraq into “sectarian murders” and plain old vanilla “you took the last potato chip” murders? They’re only counting the sectarian murders, which is how they got the number of murders to decline. And new to this report, the military is now separating “high profile bombings” from plain old “what did you say about my momma” bombings. You’ll be pleased to know that high profile bombings are down.
So, with sectarian violence down, and high profile bombings down, we can now issue a report showing that violence in Iraq is down. Score that one an “I” for “Imagination.”
As for general violence:
Another measure of the Baghdad violence, the number of insurgent and militia attacks, went from 200 in a two-week period just before the troop increase began in mid-February to 390 in the first two weeks of June, before falling back to 240 in the second half of the month, according to the American figures.
See, it went up almost 100% before settling back to only 20% above where it was before the surge. That’s what we call progress! If the Iraqis will just follow our lead, they’re sure to have Iraq perfect in no time. All they have to do is weight their situation against… Pompei, maybe. Or Hell. Compared to Hell, Iraq scores a solid…
Oh, hell, it’s still an F.
