Bush has managed to slip America the shaft once again. The “surge” isn’t going to be a tactic used to quell sectarian violence. To most Americans surge sounds like a temporary situation, a series of miltary operations necssary to accomplish some short term goals. Once those goals are accomplished the surge would be over and those troops used for the surge would be returned home. Liberals and Republicans that were critical of the surge and called it what it actually seemed to be, an escalation were right. Bush used the term surge to slip another con past Congress and the American people. Petraeus: Iraq ‘Challenges’ to Last for Years
Conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to justify a drawdown of U.S. military forces, the top commander in Iraq said yesterday.
Asked whether he thought the job assigned to an additional 30,000 troops deployed as the centerpiece of President Bush’s new war strategy would be completed by then, Gen. David H. Petraeus replied: “I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do.”
Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, his diplomatic counterpart in Baghdad, said a key report they will deliver to Washington in September will include what Crocker called “an assessment of what the consequences might be if we pursue other directions.” Noting the “unhelpful roles” being played by Iran and Syria in Iraq, Crocker said: “We’ve got to consider what could happen.”
Into year five and Crocker thinks “we” should consider what will happen. They knew years ago that Iran’s influence in Iraq would be greater with Saddam removed and the truth all along has been that rather then come to terms with Iran the administration now wants the U.S. to stay in Iraq for some undetermined time. A time when Iran becomes a liberal democracy? That’s not going to happen as long as Bush keeps surging because just like American hardliners use Iraq and casting events there in terms of wining or losing, Iran’s hardliners use Iraq and the American military presence there as a propaganda talking point to stir up fears of American military expansion. Its a merry-go-round with neither Bush or Iran willing to stop spinning their wheels.
But since the deployment of five additional U.S. combat brigades began in early spring, the overall level of violence has not abated and in some respects has increased, according to a Pentagon report issued last week. Little progress has been reported in achieving the political benchmarks spelled out in the funding legislation as well as a revision of the Iraqi constitution to provide a better balance of regional and sectarian factions in the government.
Bush keeps saying we can’t leave because Iraq will be taken over by factions that would be a threat to the U.S. That is just plain absurd. The factions in Iraq are capable of maintaining an insurgency, but they are historically unable to field a credible military threat. Remember how fast Saddam’s “elite” Republican Guard fail after the initial invasion or how fast and decisively Israel defeated Egypt in the Six Day War. Bush and his dead-end supporters honestly believe some of this paranoid garbage about Iraq and Iran, but much of it is part of their Chicken-Little routine. They’ve been playing the sky is falling game for so long that they don’t know how to stop or have enough humility to admit they were wrong and will continue to be wrong.
More chilling effects from the right-wing noise machine. They can’t win the war of ideas so they sue to shut-up those that track their lies and distortions, Right-Winger Sues Blogger And Wins
Having gathered 59 votes — one short of what’s needed to stop a filibuster — Senator Richard Bryan nearly passed legislation to raise fuel economy standards in 1990. But one year later, when Bryan had a very good shot at getting the 60 votes he needed, the environmental movement cut a deal with the automakers. In exchange for the auto industry’s opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, environmentalists agreed to drop its support for the Bryan bill. “[I]t was scuppered by the environmentalists, of all people, ” New York Times auto industry reporter Keith Bradsher notes bitterly.3
Tragically, had Bryan and environmentalists succeeded in 1991, they would have dramatically slowed the rise of SUVs in the coming decade and reduced the pressure on the Refuge — a patch of wilderness that the Republicans again used to smack around environmentalists under President George W. Bush. The environmental community’s failure in 1991 was compounded by the fact that the Bryan bill “helped scare Japanese automakers into producing larger models,” a shift that ultimately diminished the power of both the UAW and environmentalists.
Hopefully the UAW and environmentalists have learned something from that fiasco. I remember that the conventional wisdom was for Democrats not to push CAFE too hard because it would hurt unions. That wisdom has come back to haunt all of us especially auto-workers because their employers were so sure they knew what the trends in auto sales would be, an unsustainable love affair with gas guzzling trucks and SUVs.
Abby Mallard: [Smiling broadly] Runt, should Chicken Little have an open talk with his father and clear the air…
[winks]
Abby Mallard: [Frowning] … or keep searching for Band-Aid solutions and never deal with the problem?
Runt of the Litter: Pfft! Band-Aid solutions!
Chicken Little (2005)
The Long Goodbye 
