It looks bad, but really, it’s worse

Much of the “success” that is often attributed to the surge escalation by administration mouthpieces and the rah-rah chorus in the establishment media can actually be traced to a truce called by Moqtada al Sadr, and a “strategy” that has US forces paying protection money to assorted Sunni militias.

But we knew that.

However, now that fighting in Basra is reaching pre-surgescalation levels and violence is heating up around Baghdad, here are a couple of things that we are just learning.

First, to Basra:

Since August 2007, Moqtada al Sadr has established a cease fire and held back his forces from attacks but he has never denied their right to self defense. This cease fire is the primary cause of decreased casualties in Iraq.

. . . .

With upcoming provincial elections likely to show serious losses for both Maliki’s Dahwa party and Hakim’s SIIC and growing support for Mahdi associated representatives, it’s not surprising that Cheney and our occupation allies were deep in talks last week – nor is it surprising that we now see a dramatic push by green zone forces on Basra where Sadrist forces had been gaining power where Hakim's SIIC used to have considerable power.

. . . .

[During his visit, Cheney] reported[ly] gained agreement from al Hakim for provincial elections, elections in which Hakim’s SIIC is expected to do poorly given popular support for al Sadr. As Badger writes today:

These are two of the famous Bush "benchmarks": Oil and Gas Law, and progress toward provincial elections. In the case of Barzani and the Oil law, the quid pro quo was obvious. But what was the quid pro quo for the Supreme Council? One possible--I would say obvious--answer now suggests itself: In exchange for the Supreme Council dropping its obstruction of the Provincial Powers law, the US would tolerate, and provide air-support for, a campaign against the Sadrists in the Basra region.

The gains for George and Dick are clear - weaken or distract those pesky nationalist forces, justify continued troop surge and presence, gain "approval" of US benchmarks (though not popular approval) and keep control of Iraqi oil in the hands of men like Hakim.

And, literally breaking as I write this, al Maliki has given the Mahdi militias 72 hours to lay down their weapons or face unspecified serious consequences.


As for the Sunni “awakening”/bribery:

. . . a strike by (formerly) pro-American members of an Awakening council in Diyala reveals a country-wide frustration with the US, even among its allies. The men of Diyala say they have not received pay they were promised, and feel that the US does not appreciate the sacrifices they have made for the surge. They have buried over 400 of their own, and now some feel they are just being manipulated to advance an American political agenda. Of 49 groups the Guardian spoke with across Iraq, most reported not being paid. In Hillah, discontented fighters spoke of organizing a nation-wide strike.

It is discouraging enough that these “truces” are now falling apart—for Iraqis and Americans alike—but it is disgusting to realize that, once again, what little good might have come of the recent “breathing space” will now be fouled by typical Bush-Cheney greed and cynical political gamesmanship.


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

By any other name

When five US combat brigades depart Iraq in July—because their over-long, 15-month rotations are up, and not because of any actual strategic decision—it will represent the end and sum total of what George W. Bush not-too-long-ago called our “return on success.” As reported in today’s New York Times (via Think Progress), it “now appears likely that any decision on major reductions in American troops from Iraq will be left to the next president.”

In other words, what the Bush Administration successfully branded as a “surge” proves to be exactly what I insisted it was over a year ago, an escalation.

Even though most of this escalation in forces will remain in Iraq through the end of Bush’s term, I will bet that most in the establishment media will continue to call it a “surge”—just as the same scribe corps continues to parrot and push the never true and constantly disproved myth that “the surge is working.”

Just to reiterate, because it seems that we all have to, the latest escalation has not worked. It certainly didn’t promote any kind of grand political reconciliation—its purported strategic goal—and even the claim that it decreased overall violence is extremely suspect.

After fourteen months of this tactic, the occasion of reaching 4,000 dead troops serves to underscore the escalation’s abject failure. Not only does that number promise to go ever higher for the rest of Bush’s reign, the last two weeks got us to this tragic milestone much faster than expected. The 25 killed in the last fortnight represents the highest death rate for a two-week period since September 2007 (which came at the end of the bloodiest summer of the war).

Iraqi deaths are also creeping back up, Sunni and Shiite militias appear to be growing restless, and the US still has no set plan for transitioning out of this occupation.

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have both proposed more rapid US troop redeployments, but John W. McCain has a different idea. . . or, rather, he has the most un-different idea. To quote the Times: “The Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, has advocated following a policy close to that of President Bush’s.”

Four more years of an over-stretched military, mission drift, and continued escalation—overseen by a guy that doesn’t even seem to understand the conflict? Sounds like the Republicans are offering McMore of McSame.

. . . .

For a different—as in better—way to deescalate the occupation, please check out A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq (this is my review, or click below to read about the full plan and who is supporting it).




(cross-posted on guy2k and The Seminal)

Was Warner tipped off?

Does anybody else find this odd? Last month, Sen. John Warner (R-VA) made a big show of “breaking” with the president by calling for a token reduction in the number of US troops serving in Iraq by Christmas:

I say to the President, respectfully, pick whatever number you wish. You do not want to lose the momentum. But certainly, in the 160,000 plus — say 5,000 — could begin to redeploy and be home to their families and loved ones no later than Christmas of this year.

Despite the couched request and the very small number, Warner’s statement was supposed to be a big deal—as if this grand old man of the Senate was laying down a condition for continued support from Republicans in his sphere.

Well, at the start of the week, Gen. David Petraeus made a remarkably similar sounding recommendation, and Thursday night (shock! awe!), Decider-in-Chief Bush “decided” to take the general’s “advice”:

Because of this success, General Petraeus believes we have now reached the point where we can maintain our security gains with fewer American forces. He has recommended that we not replace about 2,200 Marines scheduled to leave Anbar province later this month; in addition, he says it will soon be possible to bring home an Army combat brigade; for a total force reduction of 5,700 troops by Christmas.

Leaving aside that “success” in Anbar, you could say that Warner knew the 5,000 number was a safe bet because that many troops were due to rotate out anyway. That is almost true, but they were not due to leave before Christmas. Most of what I have read has stated that a reduction in the overall numbers in Iraq would not have to happen due to the 15-month rotation deadline until April—so, while this is not a real “withdrawal” (the president never used that word in his speech, by the way), it is a slightly accelerated rotation schedule.

Since we know that Gen. Petraeus was coordinating with the White House on his “recommendations” for weeks before the September 10 testimony, is it possible that the administration also coordinated with Sen. Warner?

Would you change your mind if I told you that the Senator met with White House “war czar” Gen. Doug Lute on the same day that he delivered his remarks about a token Christmas withdrawal?

I know that it was leaked that administration officials reached out to Warner to get him to “clarify” his remarks, and I know that the Virginia Senator came under some fire from the super-wingnutty members of his caucus, but the former Mr. Liz Taylor’s wobbles have always been more word than deed (Warner has never cast a vote against Bush’s Iraq war agenda), and the number and timing are just too close.

Since even the White House and the establishment media each freely admit that the President’s “strategy” is designed to keep wobbly Republicans in the stay-the-course camp, it seems very possible to me that part of this strategy is to cement Republican support by coordinating with a purported senior wobbler.

Strange fruit

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Today’s LA Times’ top of the page news analysis has the basic “strategy” of the stay-the-course talk you are hearing this week from Gen. David Petraeus and his White House puppet masters pretty much pegged:

The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions, yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush's plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor.

The plans outlined by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would retain a large force in the country -- perhaps more than 100,000 troops -- when the time comes for Bush to move out of the White House in January 2009.

And the NY Times editorial board was none too impressed, either:

For months, President Bush has been promising an honest accounting of the situation in Iraq, a fresh look at the war strategy and a new plan for how to extricate the United States from the death spiral of the Iraqi civil war. The nation got none of that yesterday from the Congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It got more excuses for delaying serious decisions for many more months, keeping the war going into 2008 and probably well beyond.

. . . .

The headline out of General Petraeus’s testimony was a prediction that the United States should be able to reduce its forces from 160,000 to 130,000 by next summer. That sounds like a big number, but it would only bring American troops to the level that were in Iraq when Mr. Bush announced his “surge” last January. And it’s the rough equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity.

That’s because US military forces cannot sustain current levels in Iraq past early Spring without precipitously undermining the capabilities of the Army and Marines. By ‘round about the time of the Republican National Convention next Summer, US troop levels in Iraq will roughly resemble the pre-2007 escalation totals—and Republican candidates up and down the ticket will claim that President Bush has brought us closer to “victory” in Iraq.

While several other editorials also recognize this “kick the can” strategy, it is a much-touted tactic—the arming of Sunni warlords in Anbar Province (which, in truth, started months before Bush announced his “surge”—and was actually proposed by the Sunnis three years before that)—that is providing the White House and wingnuts, alike, with the political cover necessary to keep WINOs (wobblers in name only) and the beltway pundit class in line.

Well, almost. Take a gander at noted conservative beltway insider George Will’s Washington Post column. Will is also unambiguously unimpressed with the Bush administration’s September policy roll-out, but—his declaration of improving security aside (how can it be “real” if it is mismeasured?)—it is his assessment of what lies beneath this “improvement” that bears special attention:

First, measuring sectarian violence is problematic: The Post reports that a body with a bullet hole in the front of the skull is considered a victim of criminality; a hole in the back of the skull is evidence of sectarian violence. But even if violence is declining, that might be partly because violent sectarian cleansing has separated Sunni and Shiite communities. This homogenization of hostile factions -- trained and armed by U.S. forces -- may bear poisonous fruit in a full-blown civil war.

Got that? Homogenized hostile factions “trained and armed by US forces” resulting in a “full-blown civil war.”

I know what you’re thinking—there is already a full-blown civil war playing out daily in Iraq—but think a bit more: imagine a full-blown civil war with each faction trained and armed by the US.

If Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his White House pals get their way, you won’t have to imagine too hard.

You heard on Monday, and will hear more and more in coming days, about the new new administration “strategy” (which, again, is really a tactic) of “bottom up” security in Iraq—and that “bottom up” tactic means arming sectarian and ethnic factions all across Iraq, just like the US military did in Anbar.

It is important now to note that the “23 tribes”—as administration hacks call them—that are now supposedly fighting alongside US troops in Anbar Province to help stamp out the nefarious forces we feel the political need to call “al-Qaeda in Iraq” have sworn allegiance to US military commanders, and not to any Iraqi national government. That there is no grand national “strategy” that can work with this Anbar tactic is evident on its face, but, furthermore, we must ask: what happens when this tactic begins to fail?

I say “when” and not “if” because I would like to go on record right now and say it will, in the long run, fail. It will fail if your goal is to build a strong, multi-ethnic, cross-sectarian government in Iraq; it will fail if your goal is to provide predictable and long-running security for US occupying forces.

Perhaps you are now wondering what could possibly make me so pessimistic after four-and-a-half years of Bush’s “victory strategy,” so, let me explain. If Ambassador Crocker’s proposal to expand the “bottom up” plan is to come to fruition, then (and this was more than implied) the US will have to also arm and train—and bribe—Shiite militias (or “tribes,” if you must) so that they, too, won’t try to kill Americans. The question of which Shiite faction we will choose to arm notwithstanding, what will the Sunni minority think when larger Shiite populations get even more arms and money to fight those that they (the Shiites) call enemies? Sooner or later, one faction or another will decide that some other group is getting a dangerously unfair slice of America’s largesse, and then, all bets are off.

Except my bet that this latest strategic tactic will be a bloody failure.

And the bet that it will be up to the next administration to try to mop up Bush’s bloody mess.

As I observed exactly three months ago, you reap what you sow. As George Will now knows, like Abel Meeropol did long ago, our harvest will be a strange, bitter, and shameful one.

(cross-posted to Daily Kos; thoughts on the anniversary of 9/11 over on guy2k)

Hell hath no fury like a viceroy scorned

Smoldering for months—that’s apparently what our former man in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, has been doing. I’m sure you’re thinking, “well, it’s been summer, it’s been hot, not ‘128 degrees in the shade, I’m a soldier on patrol in Diyala in full battle armor’ hot, but perhaps hot enough to be ‘smoldering’ if you chose your vacation home poorly and forgot to pack a swimsuit.” But that’s not what got El Paul muy caliente.

Bremer is steamed at his former dear leader for implying that de-baathification was all Paul. . . or at least so says the New York Times quoting the self-anointed Viceroy of Iraq’s reaction to the new Bush bio Dead Certain.

Judgments on the book (I have not read it) aside, I have several thoughts:

I will never quite get over the propensity these guys have for self-aggrandizement at the cost of loyalty. I guess you could say that if you took a job doing anything for the Bush Bunch then you might have some ‘splainin’ to do; on the other hand, if you really believe in what you are doing, then stand behind it and stop pointing fingers.

Of course, if I had anything to do with the making of the mess we now swallow hard and call Iraq, I think I would shut the hell up and hope that in 10 or 20 years enough people would forget who the fuck I was so that I might be lucky enough to order a Big Mac without fearing that some poor kid of a dead or maimed soldier spit on it behind the counter.

But, I guess it’s as Humphrey Bogart’s character dryly remarked in Nick Ray’s In a Lonely Place, “There’s no price too great for a chance at immortality.”

The interchange between the president and the viceroy, as documented in the, uh, documents given to the Times by Bremer shows a president that is either incompetent, an idiot, or a liar. Or, perhaps (OK, most likely), all three.

Bush’s thank you for the Bremer report that contained the plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” reads as follows: “Your leadership is apparent. You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence.”

What does that sound like to you? Here’s what it sounds like to me: Bush didn’t read the report. It sounds like the BS that allows you to sneak through another day as the “CEO President.” It’s the kind of crap that passes for decision-making and leadership in way too many companies (a few of which I have had the sad luck to work for, so I’ve heard and read shit like this first hand).

On the other hand, here’s what Bush had to say when asked about the decision to disband the Iraqi Army by Dead Certain author Robert Draper:

“The policy had been to keep the army intact; didn’t happen,” Mr. Bush told the interviewer. When Mr. Draper asked the president how he had reacted when he learned that the policy was being reversed, Mr. Bush replied, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, “This is the policy, what happened?’ ”

What does that sound like to you? Here’s what it sounds like to me: Bush is lying. The construction of that first sentence—“The policy had been. . . didn’t happen”—strenuously avoids pronouns and specificity. It is not “my policy” or “our policy”—Bush has removed himself from the equation. And, rather than be specific about how or why or on whose orders, Bush just adds the clipped “didn’t happen.” It’s like magic or the rites of spring—flowers bloom, Baathists are turned loose with their guns, but without a salary or a purpose.

And what to make of “I can’t remember, I’m sure I said”? If you can’t remember, how can you be sure you said anything? I’m serious about that question. That’s the kind of statement you make when you’re revising history as you go.

Which is the big story here, isn’t it? In a piece entitled “Bush Shifts Terms for Measuring Progress in Iraq,” David Sanger writes:

With the Democratic-led Congress poised to measure progress in Iraq by focusing on the central government’s failure to perform, President Bush is proposing a new gauge, by focusing on new American alliances with the tribes and local groups that Washington once feared would tear the country apart.

That shift in emphasis was implicit in Mr. Bush’s decision to bypass Baghdad on his eight-hour trip to Iraq, stopping instead in Anbar Province, once the heart of an anti-American Sunni insurgency. By meeting with tribal leaders who just a year ago were considered the enemy, and who now are fighting Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a president who has unveiled four or five strategies for winning over Iraqis — depending on how one counts — may now be on the cusp of yet another.

. . . .

It was the White House and the Iraqi government, not Congress, that first proposed the benchmarks for Iraq that are now producing failing grades, a provenance that raises questions about why the administration is declaring now that the government’s performance is not the best measure of change.

Why, indeed. Could it be because Plan A5 wasn’t really a strategy to “win” this war? The tactic of escalation—the “surge”—was half-baked at best. The idea that more and more troops could ever prop up the current Iraqi “government” was far-fetched at increases of 60 to 100,000—it wasn’t even a good joke at the president’s sub-30,000 level. The splurge was designed to buy the administration time on the domestic front—to run out the clock on Iraq so other items on the Bush agenda could continue to be pushed while it would be left to a future Democratic president to fend off questions of “Who lost Iraq?” Still flagging poll numbers and an inconvenient GAO report now requires that history gets another rewrite.

Remember, this is a president who came to his high office unable to even say the word “strategy” (OK, “strategery” was first used on SNL by Will Ferrell, but, if we are to believe the stories, it was quickly adopted by those inside the White House to refer to the political strategists’ power over policy decisions). There was no grand plan here beyond “Step one: Invade Iraq and topple Saddam; Step two: reap the domestic political rewards.” Indeed, as Michiko Kakutani notes in her review of Dead Certain:

[The book] ratifies what many other reporters and former insiders have said about this administration’s ad hoc, often haphazard policy-making process, while suggesting that the West Wing has grown increasingly dysfunctional over the years. . . .

For as much as the president and his staff like to criticize Bush the Father’s “prudent small ball” (their words, not mine) and claim a love for grand ideas, these guys are tacticians, and mostly reactive ones at that. The president might think he is all about conceptual five-dollar words like “democracy” and “freedom,” but everything he and two-bit brain trust plan is designed to influence domestic US politics and monetarily enrich family and friends. End of story.

Bremer’s inconvenient truths simply pull back the curtain a little more on this tiny sausage factory. You don’t want to think our government works like this, but take something bigger than a sound bite and savor events for a moment, and you’ll know it does.

And that’s my story—and I’m stickin’ to it.

(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

WTF NPR?

It is actually hard to quantify the number of insults and inaccuracies contained in two radio pieces by NPR reporter David Greene that aired on last night’s All Thing’s Considered and today’s Morning Edition—there are that many.

The segments, as introduced and summarized on air and on the NPR website, are “reporting” on the supposed difficulties that Democrats (most specifically those running for President) are having with the current situation in Iraq. Why the difficulties? As Greene tells us, flat out, “It’s becoming clear the troops that President Bush added are doing some good.”

Really now? Says who, exactly? I mean, says who besides the president and his fan club?

Greene quotes no one on that point. Doesn’t even bother to bother us with Pollack or O’Hanlon. He certainly doesn’t bother to cite statistics, like those that say Iraqi civilian deaths are as high as ever, or those that show this to be the bloodiest summer of the war for American troops.

Greene also fails to even mention that many will disagree with his warm and fuzzy assessment. For instance, how about those seven US Army infantrymen and noncom officers? They “are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political, and social unrest we see every day.” And that was before they heard David Greene’s pieces.

After Greene tells us how swell the “surge” is going, he then seeks to detail the “tightrope” that Democrats must walk. This is from the Morning Edition piece:

The tightrope the president must walk is vexing, but so is the tightrope for Democrats in Congress and in the presidential campaign. Two candidates, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have long criticized the war, but for the moment, they have joined the president in pointing to some military successes.

Wow. That paragraph is so messed up, it’s hard to take it apart (but let me try). First off, the President’s vexation, as explained by Greene, has to do with his need to support the rather miserable leadership of Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki (an entire post could be written on this point alone), which, as it turns out, has absolutely nothing to do with the Democrats tightrope, as “explained” by Greene.

That rope is stretched between being a longtime critic of the war and seeing some military success—which must indeed be a tough tightrope to walk, since those two “points” are not on opposite sides.

Even if we are to believe Greene’s assertion that the military surge is “doing some good” (which I do not), that does not in any way contradict a long-standing and/or ongoing opposition to the war. You can point to some regionalized or temporary success and still argue that the war was wrong from the start and continues to reap a whirlwind of problems, can’t you?

Then there is the lumping together of Senators Clinton and Obama. Their positions on the Iraq war are both different from the one President Bush likes to trumpet, but that doesn’t mean they are the same. Clinton voted for the Authorized Use of Military Force (in Iraq); Obama did not. Obama continues to speak proudly of his 2002 position, and Clinton stands by her directly opposite vote.

And, if that were not information enough, we have audio! While the morning piece quotes only Clinton, the segment on ATC played clips from both Senators. (Greene ignores all other the Democratic candidates for president on ATC, and only quotes Richardson and Biden, in addition to Clinton, in the morning.)

Here’s what Senator Clinton had to say:

We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in al Anbar province, it's working.

And here’s what Senator Obama said (audio is on the NPR site, the same speech is quoted in the New York Times):

Our troops have performed brilliantly in Iraq. They have done everything we have asked of them. They have won every battle they have fought. . . . [But] no military surge, no matter how brilliantly performed, can succeed without political reconciliation and a surge of diplomacy in Iraq and the region. Iraq’s leaders are not reconciling.

First, how are those two quotes even remotely similar? Second, where in Obama’s statement does he say that the surge is doing some good?

Trust me, I’ve read it and listened to it a half-dozen times, it doesn’t say anything of the sort. But Greene doesn’t let that get in the way—he’s got a story to tell, an analogy to make, and, apparently, a point of view to push.

This is Greene’s walk-off (from the ATC version):

Once again, key Democrats find themselves under all too familiar pressures: The need to show support for American troops, and the need to satisfy those Democrats that wanted the war over yesterday.

Memo to NPR: How the hell are those two things mutually exclusive? Where’s the dance (as Greene also calls it)? Explain how that makes for a tightrope.

If the Democrats are walking a tightrope, it is between some lizard brain fear of Republicans calling them soft, and the vast majority of voters that want America to begin a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. That is a sticky wicket. That is something to talk about. But Greene would rather perpetuate the tired saw that, somehow, you can’t be opposed to this war occupation fiasco, and still care about the troops.

Is that good journalism? I don’t think it is.

And, finally, let me talk about the elephant in the room (at least the room I’m in, I have no idea where Greene is): The “surge” is a tactic—it is not a strategy. A military push might win a battle or clear a district, but it does not, in and of itself, settle this conflict. Bush’s 30,000-person PR stunt was supposed to give the Iraqi’s “breathing room” to get their house in order. Regardless of what’s going on in al Anbar, or any other part of Iraq, how has Iraq as a country, as a nation, become more stable and self-sustaining?

Again, it has not. Not even a little. And, with the carnage on all sides continuing at the highest levels, this escalation hasn’t even worked as a tactic. It hasn’t done “some good”—indeed, it hasn’t done a bit of good.

Alas, with the airing of these two factually challenged pieces by David Greene, neither has NPR.

(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

Plan B: the Plan A we had before the latest Plan A

The AP is reporting that “U.S. military officials are narrowing the range of Iraq strategy options and appear to be focusing on reducing the U.S. combat role in 2008 while increasing training of Iraqi forces,” and likening this “strategy” to recommendations made in the Iraq Study Group Report almost a year ago.

Beyond the quite prevalent belief that things have devolved in Iraq to such an extent as to render the ISG recommendations irrelevant, the AP fails to remark upon the strange similarity this new “strategy option” bears to the prior ones.

Here’s Bush court scribe Michael Gordon writing last summer in the New York Times:

U.S. General in Iraq Outlines Troop Cuts

WASHINGTON, June 24 [2006] — The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say.

. . . .

Proponents of General Casey's approach described it as a carefully synchronized plan to turn over authority for security to the new Iraqi government. The administration has repeatedly said that American troops will begin to stand down as Iraqi forces stand up and begin to assert control.

. . . .

The reduction in American combat brigades would have an importance beyond troop numbers. The strategy is to gradually shift the responsibility for fighting the insurgency to the new Iraqi military and to encourage the Iraqi forces to secure the nation's territory. Arranging for the Iraqis to take on an increasing combat role is the key to reducing the American military presence in Iraq.

The other point that the AP can’t seem to work into the story: come April of 2008, the US will have to reduce the number of troops deployed in Iraq. Several brigades’ already extended tours of duty will come to a close, and we just don’t have any fresh brigades left to replace them.

I don’t know. . . is it a “strategy” if you have no other choice?

Let’s see, what else? The AP also seems to have picked up on this idea that the 2007 Bush splurge is making “progress,” and we should just give it a little more time. (Once known as a “Friedman Unit,” this has lately become known as the Pollack-O’Hanlon foil. But the administration doesn’t need a couple of pseudo liberal shills to grant permission for it to use the word “progress”—as far as Bush is concerned, we’ve had four-and-a-quarter years of “progress.”) Of course, the AP, like all those that pick up this trope, fails to cite any actual numbers, instead relying on the odd anecdotal quote. The actual numbers? Iraqi civilian deaths nationwide are up; US military deaths are at an all-time high.

Oh, and, then there’s the whole timing thing. . . the AP doesn’t seem to have enough fingers to count out the months, but my back of the envelope calculation says that “end of summer” 2008 is, uh, lemme see, yeah, about six or seven weeks before election day. Huh, how do you like that?

Finally, neither the AP, nor the unnamed military insider that was the germ of this piece, seem to be able to tell us just which Iraqi forces they plan to focus on training. Is it the SCIRI militia we have our eyes on? Maybe it’s the Mehdi Army, or maybe it’s those Al Qaeda in Anbar we are so proud of arming these days. . . .

Of course, the biggest problem that no one can quite seem to grasp anymore is that the current “strategy”—the surge—is not a strategy at all. Not in and of itself. I mean, OK, we’ve now surged, hoo-rah! No, the strategy was to surge in order to create some “breathing space” for the Iraqi government to iron out its factional problems and pass that oil law that our president and his oil company cronies are so excited about. You can argue all September long about how this neighborhood or that province is safer, but you can’t argue that the “strategy” has worked. Why? Because the Iraqi government is on the verge of collapse. . . and they all left for recess without doing much of anything regarding unity or oil wealth. . . that’s why.

Yup, it’s hard to stand down when you are busy propping up a “government” that’s in freefall.

So, what letter are we really on? Does the Bush Administration even know its own ABC’s?

(cross-posted on Daily Kos)