Joe Galloway Commentary: Iraq surge has failed in its main purpose

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Commentary: Iraq surge has failed in its main purpose
Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: March 19, 2008 07:53:44 PM

Here we are in the final throes of the Bush administration and someone has foolishly let Darth Cheney off his leash again.

He immediately set off on a celebratory visit to Baghdad to praise the “huge accomplishment” of increased security wrought by the now-ending surge in the number of American troops. A large “BOOM” or two marked his pronouncements and another 40 Iraqi civilians died at the hands of a suicide bomber.

The vice president swiftly got down to repeating one of the old lies he loves so well, telling us how Iraq and the late dictator Saddam Hussein were connected to the events of 9/11.

Next door in Jordan the putative Republican nominee for president, Sen. John McCain, on his way home from his own personal tour of Baghdad, repeated for the second day in a row a charge that Iran was training al Qaida terrorists and then sending them back to Iraq. At the urging of fellow senator Joe Lieberman he quickly corrected that to say that Iran was training Iraqi insurgents.

But for the traveling politicians and this week’s fifth anniversary of our invasion and occupation of Iraq the war would have continued to be missing in action from network and cable television and the front pages of our newspapers, as well as from the attention of most Americans.

After all, who has time to think about our wars when we have the ongoing road show as the last two Democrats still standing in their party’s nomination process do personal battle, the state of New York struggles to find a governor who can keep his zipper closed and the nation’s economy is melting down quicker than Chernobyl’s reactors.

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