Cockburn Debunks Iraq Surge Nonsense

Watch.

The Surge and the Bush Lie

by Nir Rosen in Rolling Stone

It's a cold, gray day in December, and I'm walking down Sixtieth Street in the Dora district of Baghdad, one of the most violent and fearsome of the city's no-go zones. Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what "victory" looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets. Mountains of trash stagnate in the pungent liquid. Most of the windows in the sand-colored homes are broken, and the wind blows through them, whistling eerily. House after house is deserted, bullet holes pockmarking their walls, their doors open and unguarded, many emptied of furniture. What few furnishings remain are covered by a thick layer of the fine dust that invades every space in Iraq. Looming over the homes are twelve-foot-high security walls built by the Americans to separate warring factions and confine people to their own neighborhood. Emptied and destroyed by civil war, walled off by President Bush's much-heralded "surge," Dora feels more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic maze of concrete tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood. Apart from our footsteps, there is complete silence....

But loyalty that can be purchased is by its very nature fickle. Only months ago, members of the Awakening were planting IEDs and ambushing U.S. soldiers. They were snipers and assassins, singing songs in honor of Fallujah and fighting what they viewed as a war of national liberation against the foreign occupiers. These are men the Americans described as terrorists, Saddam loyalists, dead-enders, evildoers, Baathists, insurgents. There is little doubt what will happen when the massive influx of American money stops: Unless the new Iraqi state continues to operate as a vast bribing machine, the insurgent Sunnis who have joined the new militias will likely revert to fighting the ruling Shiites, who still refuse to share power.
"We are essentially supporting a quasi-feudal devolution of authority to armed enclaves, which exist at the expense of central government authority," says Chas Freeman, who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. "Those we are arming and training are arming and training themselves not to facilitate our objectives but to pursue their own objectives vis-a-vis other Iraqis. It means that the sectarian and ethnic conflicts that are now suppressed are likely to burst out with even greater ferocity in the future." ...

Krauthammer: Wrong About Iraq as Usual, Worse than a Broken Clock

Update III: U.S. Moves the goalposts in Iraq, again

Update II: ‘Wave Of Violence’ Against Women In Iraq Undercuts White House’s Claims Of Success

Update: Krauthammer has been lying all along (imagine that): 20,000 vets' brain injuries not listed in Pentagon tally.

Charles Krauthammer in this morning's Post brings more happy news from Iraq: Now, really, really, it's going well; our illegal war is working.

The violence in Iraq has been dramatically reduced. Political allegiances have been radically reversed. The revival of ordinary life in many cities is palpable. Something important is happening.

"(P)alpable." Let's take a glance at this morning's news. Juan Cole's blog shows us:

Friday, November 23, 2007
Dozens Killed in Bombings,
Clashes 3 Million Iranian Pilgrims Expected
41% of Jihadis are Saudis

That doesn't sound so good to establish a client oil state for us.

Maybe that day was just an outlier day, let's look at Thursday:

Thursday, November 22, 2007
Abu Abd and Baghdad Security
US Soldier Killed
dozens of Iraqis Killed or Wounded

Here's a second glance:

Reuters reports civil war violence in Iraq for Wednesday. Excerpts:
BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed ... Three U.S. soldiers were wounded. ...

DIWANIYA - Police arrested 30 people, accused of assassinations and other attacks against Iraqi security forces ...

RAMADI - At least six people were killed when a car exploded ... with 15 wounded...

BAGHDAD - Three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in Mansour district of western Baghdad, police said...

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi army found six decomposed bodies buried...

LONDON - Two British military personnel were killed in Iraq on Tuesday...

Today, is Nov. 23, and only 30 Americans killed so far this month. Wonderful news.

Only a few hundred Iraqis killed this month. Millions dislocated and moved from their homes. Segregated neighborhoods. A country occupied against its will.

Charles Krauthammer, the neocon chickenhawk, is really right this time, he says. How could we have ever doubted him?

You heard the saying: "Even a broken clock is right twice a day"?

The neocons aren't even that good.

###

Twelve Former Army Captains Blast Iraq War

Twelve former Army captains who served in Iraq set the record straight, presenting a desperate and hopeless situation in Iraq maintained by lies from the administration and U.S. tax dollars.

We need more people in government like these former Army captains to tell the truth as Bush keeps lying, spending billions, and killing and maiming.

From this morning's Post:

As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we've seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it's like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it's time to get out. ...
There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.
America, it has been five years. It's time to make a choice.

###