Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiFollowing two days of carefully staged theatrics on Capitol Hill and cable television, the essential facts about Iraq remain unchanged. Despite the big charts and the blustering fanfare highlighted by Fox News, neither Gen. David H. Petraeus nor Ambassador Ryan Crocker could convincingly claim that the American military escalation in Iraq is achieving its original goals.
Having assured us last spring that we would learn by September whether the so-called "surge" is a success according to those benchmarks, the general and the diplomat now ask us to disregard the original measures, look elsewhere for wisps of hope, and give the Bush plan still another six months.
By then, of course, there will not be enough troops available to continue the escalation. While Petraeus sought to portray the eventual withdrawal of several brigades as the result of "success," the truth is that the Army, Marines and National Guard will soon reach the breaking point.
Meanwhile, our soldiers and Marines remain mired in a slow-moving civil war whose casualties can be measured not only in the dead and wounded but in the dispossessed, by the hundreds of thousands. Where the Pentagon claims that measurable violence has diminished, especially in Baghdad, the underlying reason is often that either Shia or Sunni families have been forced to flee by death squads or militias.
Rather than confront the dismal facts on the ground, both Petraeus and Crocker predictably emphasized a more uplifting assessment from recent developments in Anbar Province. The ambassador had no choice but to confess his deep "frustration" over the Iraqi government's daily failures, yet professed to find hope in the Anbar experience and the Iraqi government's response.
American commanders have exploited a rupture between Anbar's local Sunni tribal leaders and their former friends from al-Qaida in Mesopotamia. During the past few years, the insurgent sheiks have become increasingly disillusioned with the jihadis, many of whom are foreigners, over their proclivity for carrying off young women for forced marriages, killing young men who display insufficient zeal for Islamist extremism, and generally becoming a lethal nuisance.
As long ago as last January, during his Senate confirmation hearings, Petraeus first noted that the tribal leaders had shifted their allegiance against al-Qaida. At the time he said, "Right now there appears to be a trend in the positive direction where sheiks are stepping up and they do want to be affiliated with and supported by the U.S. Marines and Army forces who are in Anbar Province." Open warfare between the jihadists and the sheiks happily coincided with the arrival of additional U.S. forces in Iraq over the following months. The general cleverly dispatched 4,000 of those troops to Anbar, and proceeded to take credit for a trend he knew was already under way.
Crocker's role in the political exploitation of that coincidence was to cajole the Shia-dominated central government in Baghdad into pretending to be delighted with the new alliance between the Sunni sheiks and the U.S. Army. The honest response of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his ministers to this development was closer to pure horror, and a threat to transfer his own party's loyalties even more firmly to Iran.
Regardless of these unsettling nuances, Crocker made the very most of the Anbar situation in his House testimony on Monday. Confessing that he didn't expect the Baghdad government to fulfill the benchmarks set forth last winter as the reasons for the surge, he swiftly turned to those hopeful glimmers from west of the capital.
"I frankly do not expect that we are going to see rapid progress through these benchmarks," admitted the ambassador. "It is important to remind ourselves that the benchmarks are not an end to themselves; they are a means to national reconciliation. And I think it is very important that we maintain a sense of tactical flexibility and encourage the Iraqis to do the same, to seize opportunities to advance national reconciliation when they arise, as we have seen in Anbar and as we have seen in the government's response to Anbar, through distributing additional budget resources to this province and bringing in its young men into security forces. So while I would certainly share disappointment that progress has been slow on legislative benchmarks, that, to my mind, does not mean there has been no progress toward reconciliation. There has been."
In other words, we must forget about all the agreed benchmarks, gaze instead upon a contrived tableau of reconciliation in a single province, and pretend to see progress.
Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.
© 2007 TruthDig.com
13 Comments so far
Show AllSome people are going to be fooled by the lipstick and pretty dress on this Iraq prom date. But after a casual glance I can see it is just a pig in makeup and a dress.
I now formally apologize to all pigs everywhere.
Look at the bright side of life!
The Iraqi patriots are winning!
They are the only faction that has stood up to Bush and stopped his progress to becoming world dictator.
Kick my ass; I spit in your face.
Bush gangsters meet Iraqi Insurgents.
What an amazing title to the lead article above: "The Illusion of Progress in Iraq."
The title reveals a hidden and ridiculous assumption.
Namely, that this war of naked aggression, sneaked through on the basis of willful lies, nonetheless contained the POSSIBILITY of achieving something other than disaster.
Natanial Heidenheimer__ You made a good point about time to take the Republic back. Instead of letting the Bush combo send our young people into Iraq for nothing, we needed to keep them right here in this country to fight for our freedoms rather than for some trumped up cause over there spelled OIL. If this nation cannot survive this terrible assualt by our own leaders, what good will the oil do anyway?
the last paragragh above makes toe most sense.
The only way Cheney/Bush America can lose in Iraq, or Iran, is if some other nation gets the oil.
Leaders of both parties seem to act if that is case. None of the death and destruction seems to matter. If it did would it go on?
All the enlisted American armed forces, clearly would be money ahead, if they deserted and joined the mercenaries. Some would have better equipment and benefits too.
It may turn out that the people who ride camels in the desert are not fools, and that our big mistake was trading horses and horse sense, for 'horse power,' at four dollars a gallon. The New American Centaurs.
Hi. I strongly recommend this new book by Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11. It was just published by the University of California Press
http://www.amazon.com/Road-11-Wealth-Empire-America/dp/0520237730
Stunning Work of Immense Value to Every American, September 3, 2007
By Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
I put this book down in something of a daze. This is one of the top five books relevant to understanding Dick Cheney, 9/11, Iraq, and the demise of the Republic.
This author is a Nobel-level researcher who has specialized in cover-ups and conspiracies, who with this book has fourteen serious books in being, a few of them poetry of a serious nature.
The book begins with a lovely list of nineteen trailblazers that is galringly incomplete, but a nice touch and worthy of note.
As I worked my way through the book I was thinking to myself that this author has brought together, in one volume in which half the pages are endnotes, much of what I have been trying to address in my 950+ reviews and my lists on Cheney and 9/11 and anti-Americanism.
The author is superbly credible and well-written in documenting the many miscalculations that have been the result of the intersection between Saudi Arabia, Texas and Geneva, and aggravated (my own view) by Zionists and Israeli genocide against the Palestinians and the Lebanese. I have a note, "tontos utiles," which is what Americans are called in Latin America: "useful idiots." In reality, Cheney is not an idiot, he is simply the most amoral war criminal to ever sit in the Oval Office.
The author is extremely good at showing how Cheney's power emerged with the creation of the Continuity of Operations (COG) parallel government during the Reagan Administration. I am quite certain that Dick Cheney was controlling every aspect of US Government operations on 9/11, and I believe this book and the other books listed below to the point that I feel the 9/11 Commission was a cover-up, and We the People must indict and impeach Dick Cheney or be forever disgraced in the eyes of the world as accomplices to his murderous misdeeds and his 25 high crimes and misdemeanors.
The author ends the book beautifully, with a call for Open Politics that ends with glossary of open politics. Readers may be interested in my keynote speech to Gnomedex in Seattle, "Open Everything, which will shortly be available at my web site as a 9 minute download, with the slides easily found at my website/GNOME.
The author is an English professor, and I can think of no higher praise for his work than to say he is the most erudite patriot I have ever read. This is a moving thoughtful work of enormous importance to those who wish to save the Republic and the Constitution from the criminals and traiors that have hijacked the three branches of the federal government.
There are 27 secessionist movements for good reason. If we do not act now, before 2008, every one of those 27 secessionist movements will have every right to withdraw from what has become the most dangerous rogue nation on the planet. What is being done "in our name" is immoral, unaffordable, unsustainable, and unnecessary. It's time we took the Republic back.
Please read Garret Keizer's article in the October 2007 issue of Harper's magazine considering the possibility of a general strike.
I'm repeating this comment but it seems appropriate here also.
News you WON'T see in the United States.
Caught a BBC review of the week's events last night.
Iraqi leaders were breathing a sigh of relief. They understood that behind the smokescreen of Petraus and Crocker, nothing will change. The BBC commentators spelled out that the week's events were meant to lull Congress and the voters while continuing 'status quo' on the US approach to Iraq. The Iraqi leaders were glad to see that the talks were only political window dressing for consumption by the gullible US public and not a meaningful shift in strategy.
At the Montreal Comedy Festival 2007 the American Comedian opened his skit by saying George W Bu$h is about as popular in America as TESTICULAR CANCER .....LOL
Well what else could he say....In other countries at the moment it's become embarrassing to admit you're American. Heck-of-a-job Bu$hie....
Nothing we try to do as citizens in America will have any impact on the government. Here's what protests, peaceful or not, will get us: The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007, would place all governmental power in the hands of the President and effectively abolish the checks and balances in the Constitution.
King George would like nothing more than an excuse to enact his Royal Decree. I'm sure he just hates having all those lovely detention centers just sitting around empty.
The people of American have been trapped. It's time to swallow our pride and ask for help. I know the UN is far from perfect but it's really all we have left at this point. A united effort by enough nations is the only thing that will put a stop to the Fourth Reich.
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/unsanam2
PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION. When there are enough signatures I will hand deliver it to the UN myself if I'm not disappeared by DHS first.
There is no person in power brave enough to get us out.
There is no brave person with enough power to get us out.
We will remain in the Iraqi quicksand, sinking lower and lower, eyeing the mirage of victory, until the inevitable catastrophe occurs.
50 ways to leave Iraq (pronto)
1- House does not pass appropriations bill. End of story as all appropriations bills must originate in the House
2-41 senators filibuster Iraq appropriation bill
3-50
51 senators pass appropriation with time lines. Bush vetoes. Congress then sends him 1 month appropriation bill. Repeat as necessary