The Bush team, using a front group called "Freedom Watch" is launching a new $15 million TV ad campaign pushing the stay-the-course-in-Iraq message. The group is run by former White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer, who was the White House's chief public salesman of the war, and who was heavily involved in pushing the false claim that Saddam's Iraq was buying Uranium in order to make a bomb. He also was a defense witness in the trial that eventually convicted Scooter Libby of lying. His message: "We want to get the message to both Democrats and Republicans: Don't cut and run, fully fund the troops, and victory is the only objective." In truth, the ads are mostly aimed at Republicans. Of the 41 Congressional districts where the ads are running, 37 are Republican districts. That's 90%. Obviously worried that GOP congressmen are getting an earful from angry constituents while home on summer recess, the ads are designed to keep Republican defectors in line.
Meanwhile US troop deaths in Iraq are way up this summer, the Iraq Parliament is on vacation, and nearly half the Iraqi cabinet is boycotting the government.
And meanwhile Bush is making the ludicrous assertion that ending the Viet Nam war was a mistake. He spoke of the loss of life in the wake of the US withdrawal from Viet Nam, without mentioning the catastrophic loss of life brought on by our participation in that civil war. He's also comparing our misadventure in Iraq to our victory in Japan which left a "shining democracy" behind. He says that our efforts in Iraq are paying off, and withdrawal would pull the rug out from under our troops.
In truth, Iraqis increasingly are growing to hate us, anti-US terrorism in Iraq is growing, chaos is spreading, and they are descending deeper and deeper into civil war. Islamic fundamentalism and hatred of the US are becoming the only unifying factor in a nation that is rapidly partitioning itself into three waring parts. Our army is stretched to its limits and can not sustain the current troop levels without yet again extending troop tours by an additional 3 months. And even if the number of US troops were to somehow magically be tripled, it would be insufficient to stop the civil war.
Major planning for the war began just months before the invasion. Among the numerous major mistakes we made during the invasion, the most catastrophic was to disband the Iraq Army. The Iraq army had controlled much of the country's infrastructure and also would have been invaluable in maintaining order. They had even offered their help, and were awaiting orders from US commanders. Instead we enraged them by immediately throwing the 500,000 man army into unemployment, and put a bunch of incompetents in charge of the Iraq infrastructure; mostly unqualified and inexperienced political appointees from Washington , and even the sons and daughters of major Bush campaign contributers. These are the people we put in place to run the country. We also failed to stop the looting that turned the populace against us. And unbelievably we failed to guard the massive ammunition dumps, so Iraq is now awash in powerful weapons. The vacuum we created has been filled by militias controlled by fundamentalist Islamic leaders and war lords, and we no longer have a snowball's chance in hell of controlling the country. But Bush talks about victory.
And just for laughs Bush today said, "Prime Minister Maliki's a good guy, good man with a difficult job and I support him. And it's not up to the politicians in Washington, D.C., to say whether he will remain in his position. It is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy and not a dictatorship." In other words, you're doin' a heck of a job, Mali.
