Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy commentary: Bush still refuses to admit he was wrong

[RedEarth]

Well, now we’ve heard from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker and President George W. Bush, and it appears that the Surge has succeeded — succeeded in guaranteeing that the Iraq War will drag on for the last 16 months of the Bush presidency at a cost of another 1,600 American dead and $13 billion a month.

Extending the war, kicking that can down the road, was President Bush’s only strategic objective last January when he came up with the idea of escalating the number of American troops in Iraq from 130,000 to today’s 170,000. Put simply, the Decider wants to hand off the decision to pull the plug on his unwinnable war to someone else, anyone else.

Four and a half years after this president ordered the invasion of Iraq in a gross act of arrogance and ignorance based on faulty, bogus and politically twisted intelligence — and after repeatedly changing the rationales and objectives of the war as each has failed in turn — we’re going to continue this war because George W. Bush is incapable of admitting that he was wrong, wrong, wrong.

..........

Will Bush get away with this? From all the evidence at hand, the answer, sadly, is yes. Only the Democrats in Congress stand in his way, and they have yet to find their spines, or a semblance of moral courage, or even a sufficient understanding of the Constitution and its clauses on war making and war-financing, to override The Decider.

It’s a long journey from now to January 20, 2009, and the blood of many Americans and even more Iraqis will flow freely and stain the hands of those who allow this insane war to continue at the behest of a stubborn, unseeing, unthinking man from Crawford, Texas.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/19708.html

[seesdifferent]

1. New study confirms: a million Iraqis have been killed

its too bad the McClatchy op ed didn't include this horrific number, which Bush has been trying to deny for two years. A new British survey confirms the results of the previous Lancet publications, that body counts have grossly underestimated the deaths, just as they have in previous wars.

What events in history are comparable to this disaster, wreaked by the boy king?

[Rageneau]

2. Bush is not postponing Iraq for the next Pres. He is following his original plan.

All along, Bush's neocon plan has been to establish a large and permanent U.S. presence in Iraq. That was the plan from the get-go and it remains the plan.

That's why it doesn't matter what happens over there -- good or bad. Bush has an enirely definite view of what is inevitable. We think that it is inevitable that America will eventually give up and come home. That's naive.

Bush isn't naive. He does not care what the cost is, in money or blood. What he cares about is the plutocratic agenda -- the agenda "above" truth, justice, etc. -- and it calls for the use of America power and prestige to make big profits for plutocrats who want to force their ideas down everyone's throat.