Four more years?

[bloom]

The essential message is that BushCo has created pandemonium in Iraq - so that is the new excuse to control the Iraq oil reserves - "because we can't have the "terrorists" using it against us".

A lot of people (including Cole, it seems - or maybe he just doesn't want to say it) still do not get the idea that creating pandemonium - so the US would have the excuse of controlling the oil - was and is - the goal of the operation.

:puke: :grr:

From Juan Cole:

On Wednesday, George W. Bush again laid out his rationale for declining to consider a drawdown of U.S. forces. He said that if the "terrorists" were not defeated in Iraq, they would come after the U.S. on its own soil. "If we were to abandon that country before the Iraqis can defend their young democracy, the terrorists would take control of Iraq and establish a new safe haven from which to launch new attacks on America." Bush did not explain how he thought a small minority of Sunni Islamists (most Sunni Arabs are still relatively secular) could "take over" a country with a Shiite majority and a powerful Kurdish minority. Bush added, "We can't tolerate a new terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East with large oil reserves that could be used to fund its radical ambitions or used to inflict economic damage on the West." Although he said he was willing to try new approaches in Iraq, the tenor of his remarks was "stay the course."

...Politically speaking, with the bloodshed mounting, can the U.S. military stay in Iraq at its present levels for an additional four years? More than half the American public now considers the invasion a mistake. And some 80 percent of Iraqis want the U.S. to leave -- some 120 parliamentarians signed a motion to that effect. What will happen if crowds come out in the tens of thousands across Iraq to demonstrate against further American occupation? At what point will Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual guide of the Iraqi Shiites, issue a decree or fatwa demanding an American departure?

The car bombings and other violence in Iraq are often blamed on the United States by angry Iraqi mobs. They view the growing sectarian violence as the result of an American attempt to divide and rule. Given what polls in Iraq are telling us about the unpopularity of U.S. troops in the country, given what public health experts are telling us about the inability of those troops to stem the growing tide of sectarian killings, and given the waning support for the whole Iraq enterprise among the American public, the rationale for keeping so many ground troops in Iraq has come increasingly into question. Whether they will remain in such numbers until 2010 is no longer a military decision. It is a political decision that will jointly be made by the United States and Iraq.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/10/12/troop_levels/

http://www.juancole.com/