Dave Lindorff: Beware the Wounded Beast: Bush Has Lost the Iraq War

[EV_Ares]

The Iraq War has been lost.

The British are acknowledging this fact by pulling out their troops from Basra, Iraq's second largest city, handing over the city to the control of Shia militias. For all intents and purposes, the "Coalition of the Willing" is now dead. America is now going it alone.

Bush is not acknowledging defeat, but has indirectly admitted it by saying that some troops can start being brought home soon, even though clearly nothing has been accomplished with the addition of 30,000 troops for the last 6 months.

He acknowledged defeat too, by flying into Iraq stealthily in the dead of night this week, landing at a remote desert outpost in western Iraq, instead of going to Baghdad, and meeting with American military officials, instead of meeting with the Iraqi government. (So much for Iraq being a "sovereign nation"! Can you imaging a head of state of some foreign government, together with his war secretary and his secretary of state, flying in unannounced to some remote American state, and not even meeting with American government officials?) Clearly the U.S. military could not guarantee the president's safety in Baghdad and the Green Zone, so he had to go to a remote outpost where he was safe behind razor wire, mines, and an obscene arsenal of soldiers, tanks, and gunships.

With the British giving up on their quadrant of Iraq -- a strategically crucial location at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf, where the bulk of supplies for the U.S. military in Iraq are offloaded, and from which the vast majority of Iraq's dismal oil output is exported -- American troops are stranded, and dependent upon air drops for their secure delivery of supplies.

Reports say the real reason Bush is talking about troops coming home is because the military in Iraq is broken, and can no longer sustain a commitment of 160,000 soldiers and marines in the country.

There is no choice; they have to start coming home.

As in Vietnam, where open mutiny and sullen disobedience became the norm after 1968, in Iraq, the military is finally cracking. Seven enlisted soldiers even dared to write an open and scathing critique of the war in an opinion piece in The New York Times, saying the U.S. was widely viewed as an occupation force in Iraq, and that Iraqis wanted us out -- the sooner the better. The organization Iraq Veterans Against the War is growing rapidly in membership. The military has resorted to offering potential enlistees a whopping $20,000 bonus to go to boot camp immediately, because recruitment and reenlistment numbers for this year are so dismally low. Junior officer resignations are at a record high.

(article continues @ link)

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/lindorff/017

[pansypoo53219]

1. well,

he does want to fuck up iWan now.