BAGHDAD IS IN THE CONTROL OF SHIITES AND WILL REMAIN THAT WAY
THE BUSH WAR FOR DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ IS LOST!
I do not care what Army General Petraeus says in the next few weeks, this surge has helped drive all of the Sunnis out of Baghdad and into safer quarters. With the Shiites in power in Baghdad, neither the Sunnis nor the Kurds have a chance in hell of getting a piece of the action they seek.
As I have said umpteen times, long before one American soldiers sat foot in Iraq, because the Shiites had such overwhelming pluralities, the future was in their hands and thus in the hands of Iran. The foolishness about winning this war is pure fantasy, which is the subject Bush has majored in since he first took office.
And I feel sorry for the young soldiers who are either not smart enough, or experienced enough or who have overdosed on a false patriotism by still believing along with many of their families, that we can win this war.
This is one of those wars where our leaders blindsided us all and took our nation into a conflict we cannot win and will lose in utter disgrace—all because a less than wise administration in Washington was living under the delusion that somehow democracy will solve all the ills facing the good people of the Middle East and that Iraq was a good place to start.
I watched the recent television commercial starring this young soldier who lost his leg in Iraq pleading with Americans and the Congress to let the soldiers that remain in this war-torn nation to stay until the job is done so that he will not feel that his sacrifice was made in vain. I felt like crying when I heard him speak. This kind of patriotism would be honorable in a different set of circumstances, under wise leadership and on behalf of a cause that everyone supported and could understand. This is not the case.
This country is in the midst of a civil war. The Shiites are committing genocide against the Sunnis and the Sunnis are fruitlessly fighting back in a hopeless cause. Neither side will give one inch to help develop a democratic state.
These two religious factions hate each other. It is not just the Baptists versus the Methodists; these are ancient enemies who have been at war with one another for over 1400 years. For some reason neither Bush nor the Pentagon understands the depth of this detestation that eats at the heart and soul of both parties. This is the hatred the Jews felt for the Germans during World War II. This is the abhorrence that Americans felt for the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. This is the loathing that the Irish feel for the British. And it does not go away in a matter of sixty, or ninety or one hundred and twenty days. This is the extreme dislike that takes decades to repair and decades more to heal.
Those of you who voted for Bush because “you would like to sit down and talk with him in a bar,” as one fool so proudly stated after the 2004 election, should by now see the idiocy that has allowed this man the time a the helm of state to put our country in a hole from which we will be unable to escape for decades.
And the Swift Boar Veterans for Truth are the kind of blind patriots that would not know a gold medal hero if he fell into their laps. They are not patriotic, they are political fools. Their loyalty was to Bush rather than to the nation for which they fought. The truth they sought was propaganda and not fact.
Recently, British generals openly criticized the American handling of postwar Iraq. They called our policy “fatally flawed” and accused the Bush administration of refusing to listen to the apprehension expressed by the British following the victory over Saddam Hussein.
Major General Tim Cross had conversations with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before the invasion, encouraging him to solicit international support and employing a sufficient number of troops on the ground to “reconstruct” Iraq following the fall of Hussein.
“He did not want to hear that message. The U. S. had already convinced themselves that Iraq would emerge as a stable democracy,” General Cross told the Sunday Mirror.
“Anybody who tried to tell them anything that challenged that idea—they simply shut it out.”
These comments reverberated the words of General Mike Jackson who called Rumsfeld’s approach to the postwar Iraq “intellectually bankrupt.” William Hague, foreign affairs spokesman for the British Conservative Party said on Sunday, September 2, 2007 that “very crucial mistakes have been made,” during the conduct of the Iraq war. “Planners clearly underestimated …the number of troops that would be needed for the effective occupation force…they clearly made a mistake in the immediate disbandment of the Iraqi army.”
Earlier I mentioned reading Bob Woodward’s book, State of Denial, and coming away with the sense that the entire Bush Administration approached this war like a group of horny teenage males playing a very competitive game. The Generals in and reporting to the Pentagon were trying to please the caprice of Donald Rumsfeld rather than planning a war to win, restructure the occupied country and come home. Actually, before they ever planned the war, they were cow towing to the whims of George Bush who seems to be determined to attack Iraq and to create whatever circumstances necessary to invade that country.
Colin Powell was a major disappointment in this diversion. He headed up the team that brilliantly planned the first Desert Storm. They meticulously involved the international community and had the support of even the United Nations. Iraq had invaded Kuwait and no member of the global neighborhood supported what Saddam Hussein was attempting to do.
The American people saw the logic of what George Herbert Walker Bush was trying to do. He was going to the aid of a small kingdom that had its sovereignty assaulted by a dictator who believed that he could invade, conquer and thereby own the oil reserves of Kuwait which he viewed as an extension of this own domain.
Powell had ground forces of 500,000 boots marching across the dust and dirt of the Iraqi desert. The coalition forces were within 150 miles of Baghdad with not one Iraqi soldier standing between them and Hussein's capital. In other words, in the view of many neo-conservatives, including George W., his father’s army under General Colin Powell should have marched into Baghdad, dethroned Hussein and established a democratic government right there and then.
George H. W. Bush made a commitment to the United Nations that this army would not occupy Iraq; their only task was to drive Saddam Hussein’s armies out of Kuwait and protect the sovereignty of the Kuwaiti kingdom. George H. W. Bush kept his word and our troops, having made Kuwait safe and secure again, returned home.
Because of the invaluable experience Colin Powell gained from Desert Storm which began in January of 1991 and was concluded on February28, 1991, he knew what needed to be done. The United Nations sanctioned the war, the armies of 35 nations were involved and the United States brought 500,000 troops to the fray. He knew what it took to win a conflict of this nature. However, because of his military background, his predisposition to follow orders at all cost and his reluctance to contradict his superiors (i.e. the President of the United States), he remained silent and acquiescent far too long. When he realized the dreadful mistakes that both Bush and Rumsfeld were making, it was his duty to resign as Secretary of State in protest over what was surely to become a disaster for this country.
Unfortunately, that did not occur.
And today, September, 2007, the Shiite population of Iraq which is the majority religious group in the nation has taken control of Baghdad, has driven the Sunnis into the countryside and out of the country entirely in order to take control and open its doors to Iran their fellow Shiites and political compatriots
It will be only a matter of time until Iraq will be suffering under the heavy fist of Islamic law and democracy will be a very painful memory of the past.
The question is, now that the president has set his mind on maintaining our troops in the middle of what is an on-going civil war, what will the Congress do when General Petraeus, who like Colin Powell has a predilection to obey his commander-in-chief, makes his reports in the weeks ahead.
Bush flew into Anbar province in Iraq on Sunday, September 2, 2007 to meet with the commanders in the field, the American Ambassador to Iraq and the commanding General of U. S. Forces—General David Petraeus.
According to an article from the upcoming issue of Newsweek and MSNBC.com by Babak Dehghanpisheh and Larry Kaplow, Petraeus may well go before Congress and “cite a decline in how far the Shiite militias’ cleansing of Baghdad has progressed: they’ve essentially won. If you look at pre-February 2006, there were only a couple of areas in the city that were unambiguously Shia,” says a U. S. official who is very familiar with the issue, but is not authorized to speak about it on the record. “That is definitely not the case anymore,” “The official says that the majority, more than half” of Baghdad’s neighborhoods are now Shiite dominated, a judgment echoed in the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.”
The article goes on, “The surge of U. S. troops—meant in part to halt the sectarian cleansing of the Iraqi capital—has hardly stemmed the problem. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July was slightly higher than in February, when the surge began. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 1.1 million since the beginning of the year, nearly 200,000 of those in Baghdad governorate alone. Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraqi mission for the International Organization for Migration, says that the fighting that accompanied the influx of U. S. troops actually “has increased the IDPs to some extent.”
It will be very interesting to see and hear what General Petraeus has to say to Congress when he returns to make his command performance before America’s legislative branch of government. Will he, indeed, tell it like it is, or will he do as so many military minds tend to do, tell them what their boss wants them to tell? In other words, will Petraeus live up to his word and his reputation and put it on the line, or having read the newspapers and having been under the undo influence and pressure of the Bush Administration tell it like the Commander-in-Chief wants him to tell it?
10:37:57 PM 
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