Iraq is one BRAZILLIAN percent Bush's fault, since he lied his butt off to get us involved. Time for Bush to accept the brunt of his own lies!

welcome to the bush administration, mike

It is going to be a very long summer.

However if the push for impeachment continues, the general's report may be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and we may actually see some of these impeachment proceedings actually start. GOP can tolerate the inept who win, but hates any kind of losers.

However I think it is more likely that Bush will be give a choice by the GOP in September - Resign citing the report or sit around for the impeachment(s). Both hurt the GOP's presidential hopes for 2008, one has the option for revenge on those that caused the party's downfall.

Man I hope that report will come out on the 11th...

Iraq may prove to be a bigger disaster or defeat than Vietnam, because there's far more at stake and Iraq is far more valuable than poor Vietnam ever was. Here were talking about a strategically important country with enormous reserves of oil, perhaps the largest untapped source of oil on the planet. So "losing" Iraq would be a terrible setback.

If Iraq is a potentially bigger disaster than Vietnam will it turn out to be our version of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, with all that implies? For me that's the really big question which, as yet, remains unanswered. My guess is, either we pull-out of Iraq before its too late, or Iraq will pull us down with it!

Is it "legal" to delegate the job of civilian Commander In Chief to an active military general? Seems to defeat the whole concept of maintaining civilian control over said military, if now the soldiers are now telling the CIC what to do... it also assumes military progress, or lack thereof, is the only, or at least most important, metric for which "success" might be measured. Plus, what's with the whole "we'll talk about it after the summer" bullshit? If one of my employees ever even considered not working as hard as possible during a crisis no matter what the calendar says, he/she would be fired instantly. Can you imagine the Chief Fireman telling his crew to chill for a few months while brush fires engulfed his state? "Let's wait until after fire season - then, a report will be issued and we'll decide how to proceed with the whole putting out of the fire thing."

No electronic counters for deaths in Iraq that I'm aware of, wcdevins, but http://costofwar.com/ has one "ticking-off" the dollars spent. Too bad this can't be displayed in the corner of every TV in America. I would think it would have the same effect.

It looks as if the war will never end. I don't think congress wants it to end...they sure as hell aren't doing anything about it. Its just all talk, talk, talk....nothing is accomplished, except the looting of the US Treasury. Our soldiers, some of them on their 3rd tours of Iraq.... We have a deserter and a draft-dodger as the nation's chief executives. Will someone ask the troops how thrilled they are to be spending another summer in Baghdad's 120 degree heat? Why can't we impeach Bush & Cheney?

There is no government worth fighting for in Iraq, and there won't be in three months. There will be no Iraqi troops trained to step up. Bu$h is buying time until he can think up some more lies to preserve his pitiful legacy as something other than the greatest liar and idiot in the history of the US.

Aah! First Ahmed Chalabi plays us like a fiddle and gets us to topple of Saddam Hussein. Now al-Maliki is playing us to get rid of the Sunnis. The Shia's aren't going to step up and make the neccessary moves for a political settlement as long as American forces are around to do their bidding. The US forces have been trying to address this sectarian issue by insisting on being even-handed, but ultimately they get to see and act as the Shia dominated government wants them.

What I am afraid of is that the Shia majority government in Iraq will make a few concessions to give general Patreus his "progress" which will cause the US Congress to continue to fund the occupation in Iraq buying more time for the Shias to take further control of the contry and marginalize Sunnis. There is no need for the al-Maliki government to step up as the US is their proxy army.

The Iranian theocrats are laughing their heads off. We are consolidating their power in the middle east. All they have to do is keep minimally funding some terror activities and we will do their job for them.

General Patreus's strategy is doomed to failure by forces larger than his sphere of influence regardless of how well it works. At least Bush will have his way out. He can declare that it is General Patreus's fault.

When the President spoke out against setting a timetable for withdrawal, didn't he explain his position by saying that a timetable would just allow the enemy to lay low for a time?

When the President spoke in favor of the surge, didn't he say that the purpose of the surge was to get the enemy to lay low for a while in order to allow time and opportunity for the Iraquis to get their political house in order?

So the exact problem with the timetable is the exact purpose of the surge.

Mike

As much as I'd like to see it, the September Petraeus report will spawn neither resignation nor impeachment. Republican spin-meisters are undoubtedly writing their version of the report even now.

Why is our government so willing to sit around for another six months while 500+ more Americans and untold Iraqis die? Bush has sat around since "Mission Accomplished", which he apparently considered the end of his involvement in the "mission", since we've seen no plan since. The Surge? An additional 20,000 troops to feed the meat-grinder? That's not a plan, it's a Gallipoli re-enactment.

Someone at CD had the idea of a counter in every congressional office ticking out the lives lost in Iraq. Maybe they could put that in the corner of our TV screens along with the ads for American Idol and NASCAR. At least if Congress can't be reminded, maybe we the people will wake up and start banging on the bars...

Bush has had his time. Wait and wait for the report, then wait for the surge and wait some more. This is bull shit. Why September? My guess is that let the summer go by, easy time for the masses to unite. Then try to sell the idea that new candidates will somehow make everything all right. Then wait some more. Bush made it quite clear he will run out the clock. Impeach Now, start with the Vice. When it's all over, send these dispicable murders off to the the International Court and let them be tried.

Frank: great analogy about waiting till after fire season. Ever notice how often when government needs to DO something they merely hire a panel to "study" the phenomena in question? It's just a delay tactic. And besides, by then the news media will jump on the next Nicole Simpson or Anna Nicole or runaway bride story to maintain the smoke and mirrors that has so many misinformed, if informed at all. Democracy, a noble ideal... if only...

"Across the field you see the sky ripped open

See the rain through a gaping wound

Pounding on the women and children Who run

Into the arms

Of America"

U 2

This is a cakewalk?
Maybe the cake fell.

This will be great! The Democrats, along with whatever Republicans they can gather up (it will be perceived as having been done by the Dems, tho) will stop the War on Iraq the day before we were going to win! Just one more week and success would have been total!
Maybe they'll even impeach Bush and Cheney, and the President (Pro Tem?) Pelosi nearly works herself to death trying to staunch and maybe even repair the damage to the government and nation.

And when Election Day 2008 rolls around, the American Electorate will say: "Thank You very much for solving our problems, and let's go chase those Republican ponies. After all, you Dems are still killing babies, and giving all our money away to the underservingly dark"

If the electorate is not actively and presently suffering under the consequences of their Republican votes, their latent addiction to Kool-Aid will take hold and they will relapse. After all, those ponies are so pretty!

Don't solve the Republicans problems for them. If they're going to get the credit for ending the war (if credit can be gotten for ending a war "just before we were going to win") let them at least work for it.
And if the Dems stop it, the Repubs will take credit for winning it, which they would have in the very next Friedman.

Just give it up guys. They give us a grain of rice and we are supposed to thank them and eat it for a year. We are not going to make a difference. They tell us what we want to hear and go about their criminal ways. They are all corrupt.

The American people are too worried about staining the designers suits and imported shoes to even consider Marching or revolution.

Welcome to the end of America.

ThoughtShaman and frank define the situation well. What Jay Bookman writes about "dumping responsibility on a four star general" is the heart of the problem.

On the Senate floor, the GOP leadership dares the new Democratic Congressional majority to put their money where their antiwar mouth is and cut off all the funding (rather than using withdrawal deadlines, targeted fund cuts, achievement benchmarks, or repeal of the AUMF) as a legislative approach.

Meanwhile, back at the White House George Bush repeatedly declares that all questions involving troop levels, deescalation, redeployment, or ending the occupation has been delegated to the commanders in the field, brave provessionals whose judgment should not be second guessed by a bunch of civilian politicians thousands of miles away.

So then Dick Cheney flies off to the Green Zone and Camp Speicher on another fake turkey photo-op whirlwind tour, sending forth General Mixon as a convenient prop to declare how the Congressional squabbling over funding is "frustrating..... Congress has a responsibility to fund soldiers and to get that back into politics to me is inappropriate."

It's all a shell game. Goad the Dems to stab the troops in the back, hand off all discussion of political options to the non-political commanders in the field, and simultaneously get the Army psy-ops boys to spoon feed sound bites back to the US media about how reports of antiwar Congressional debate is undermining daily morale and the success of the noble surge mission. Now you see it, now you don't.

Frank is absolutely correct that the civilian Commander in Chief has no legal authority whatsoever to delegate his political accountability for this fiasco on to the backs of the unelected, ostensibly nonpartisan (or bipartisan) field officers. Under our Constiution, it is the Congress that declares war, makes peace, and has exclusive power to raise and support an army and navy both inside and outside the borders of the United States.

Thank God Harry Truman didn't delegate authority the President's war powers to Douglas MacArthur and Curtis Lemay in the manner George Bush would have you believe he has now done. Had he done so, Peking and Moscow, much of China and much of Russia, would probably still have a radioactive glow today.

Yep, civilian control of the military means your elected representatives can't shuck off that part of the job description where the Constitution says only they can start the wars and only they can stop them.

By the same token, ThoughtShaman has the internal Iraqi political dynamic nailed down to a gnat's nut. Of course, Maliki's Shia faction would just love to have the American occupation forces continue to do the heavy wet work, cleansing out the ethnic Sunni insurgents, their civilian sympathyzers, and even rival Shia militia forces like the followers of Moktada al Sadr.

American occupation troops now are nothing but the biggest, most hi tech militia in the mix in this tragic civil war our invasion triggered, as well as being the one faction inside Iraq that has absolutely no popular constituent base in the indigenous community (other than a handful of ex-pats like Chalabi we brought in with us to take over when Saddam fell from power). That old Carribbean model of gunboat diplomacy and topple the incumbent junta so we can replace it with our own just sure doesn't translate well into the historical realities of life in the Middle East does it?.

As a result, what's taking place in my opinion is whole lot more than just "an extraordinary situation in American history..... a huge burden for an unelected official (General Petraeus) to bear."

Rather, what's taking place is a cynical, self-serving tactic by Karl Rove and the neo-con brain trust to suck the Pentagon's professional military leadership squarely into domestic partisanship, in order to run out the clock and dump political accountability and responsibility for cleaning up Little George's mess in Mesopotamia on to his successor in the White House - just like George Bush has repeatedly said in the past that he intends to do.

It's another shameful abdication of the rule of law under our Constitutional scheme of things.

Bill from Saginaw