The week tht Revealed What the Surge is all about

 

 

Last week was the week this nation was waiting for since the first of the year. This was the week we were told that we would get the true assessment from General Petraeus about the results of the escalation of troops into Iraq. The so called Surge was to help quell the sectarian violence so that the Iraq government could work on resolving the internal political turmoil. Well there is still no real government and what we do call a government takes a months vacation while our soldiers die and are wounded.

 

Also, many of our politicians who have gone over to Iraq are given their scripted three hour tour that is carefully choreographed by this administration. Soldiers who have negative opinions are prohibited from commenting; all the while those who are not as critical are given written scripts of what to say. The streets that are shown as models of success could just as well be from a movie set at Universal Studios. Shop keepers have been paid up to $2,500 by our military to open up their shops so these politicians and reporters can feel like they’re walking down a street as if they were back home. One congressman commented that it was as if he was back in Indiana. I think he must have clicked his heels three times to many.

 

So what did we get from two days of testimony from General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker? What we got are the same statements that Petraeus gave when asked about his assessments in 2004, 2005 and 2006 with only a few minor tweaks. It all boils down to things are getting better, violence is coming down and in another six months we should be able to have a better handle on whether we are going to be successful. This time his comments did change just a little. Because instead of six months, we now have to wait till next summer. And guess what? We are going to bring home thirty thousand troops back by then. How stupid does this Administration think we are? All those troops coming home have too because it will part of their normal rotation and where are we at when they do come home? Exactly at the same number we were at before this ill-conceived Surge. Does anyone think that had General Petraeus reported anything but what the Administration wanted to hear that he would have been picked? Every other General who has voiced their concerns or opposition to this administration has been ignored and/or sacked. I’m surprised that Admiral Fallon hasn’t been asked to step down after the following story was reported, “WASHINGTON, Sep 12 (IPS) – In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus’s superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.”

 

From the Baker Commission to anyone who knows anything about the Middle East, we will never have success unless it is through political means. Bush tried to compare his current failed illegal invasion of a sovereign nation to the end of World War II when we occupied Japan and Germany. He is obviously the poster child for the “Child Who Was Left Behind” especially when it came to his history classes. Japan and Germany were primarily mono cultures who had unified structured societies. At the end of the war we allowed Emperor Hirohito to remain as well as their police departments and other governmental structures. In Germany, German soldiers and police worked hand in hand with our occupying Armies to maintain order and to help rebuild. Then the icing on the cake was his reference to comparing Iraq to Vietnam which by the way this administration has gone out of its way to deny any comparisons to for the past five years.

 

The most memorable question was asked by Senator Warner (R-VA) when he asked General Petraeus if our presence in Iraq is making us safer here at home against terrorism? Petraeus said he really has never thought about that question, which was his way of dodging the question because he knows it isn’t.

 

We have been told different reasons over all these years why we went into Iraq. Finally this past weekend someone else agreed with former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neal who said it was about oil and it was former Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan who did so. Hopefully our Congressman Carney has finally realized that he was duped when he voted against the Iraq Accountability Bill and gave Bush more time to keep this war going until he can get out of office. What is Bush’s or any of these Presidential candidates definition of Victory? Is it having more than 58,000 names of America’s finest on another black granite wall? To me Victory is not losing one more life in Iraq and Osama bin Laden is captured or killed and Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are taken to The Hague and tried as International War Criminals!

 The saddest part of this week was when I heard what had happened to the seven soldiers from the 82^nd Airborne who wrote their column several weeks ago in the New York Times. They wrote about what is really happening to them and their fellow troopers on the ground which was in contrast to what their leaders were telling the American public. On Monday two were killed and another was shot in the head. This is happening all the while Bush tells an Australian diplomat, “We’re Kicking A**!” when asked how Iraq was going?