They so wanted Obama to say he was wrong about opposing the surge

That they cropped his quote. What was actually said:

O'REILLY: You and Joe Biden, no surge.

OBAMA: Hold on a second, Bill. If you look at the debate that was taking place, we had gone through five years of mismanagement of this war that I thought was disastrous. And the president wanted to double down and continue on an open-ended policy that did not create the kinds of pressure on the Iraqis to take responsibility and reconcile.

O'REILLY: But it worked. It worked. Come on.

OBAMA: Bill, what I said is -- I've already said it succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

O'REILLY: Right. So why can't you say, "I was right in the beginning, and I was wrong about the surge"?

OBAMA: Because there's an underlying problem with what we've done. We have reduced the violence --

O'REILLY: Yeah.

OBAMA: -- but the Iraqis still haven't taken responsibility, and we still don't have the kind of political reconciliation. We are still spending, Bill, $10 to $12 billion a month.

Just enough time to let Bush

Run for cover in January 2009?

WASHINGTON -- Army Gen. David H. Petraeus has recommended that President Bush postpone sharp troop cuts in Iraq until next year, delaying a large-scale shift of combat forces to Afghanistan and reflecting concerns that widespread violence could return to Iraq.

You mean, you thought at one time it was?

Bush tells troops Iraq no longer 'hopeless':

EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska—President Bush said Monday that U.S. troops going to Iraq soon will find a country dramatically different from the one that was "hopeless" before his troop buildup.

Beginning a weeklong Asian tour with a refueling stop in Alaska, the president offered thanks to units from this base near Fairbanks and nearby Fort Wainwright that have done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He also noted an Army Stryker brigade from Wainwright is about to deploy to Iraq, saying it will be "heading into a different situation."

"About a year ago people thought Iraq was lost and hopeless. People were saying let's get out of there, it doesn't matter to our national security. Iraq's changed -- a lot," Bush said. "The terrorists are on the run."

And he again asserted that fighting them was not a law enforcement problem. "If it's a law enforcement matter, that means you react after the crime. I think it's important ... to stop the crime from happening in the first place."

Love the pic the Boston Globe posted for this article:



And about that statement about law enforcement.... the law enforcement idea works, you know. You don't have to bomb everything flat to 'win'.

Five years ago Georgie said "Bring 'em on."

And they did.

Take a look at the army we have, Mr. Rumsfeld

And the war you wanted.

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - The Defense Department's repair bill for dilapidated and destroyed equipment, weapons and vehicle is expected to exceed $100 billion this year. But if it settles the behemoth bill, the military may place in peril its plans to increase the size of the nation's armed forces.

Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the House panel that oversees defense spending, blamed the rush to upgrade the military's equipment and facilities to the failure of Pentagon to plan for a long and costly Iraq war. The Defense Department wants to bolster the size of the military with 92,000 new soldiers and Marines.

To pay the $100 billion plus military repair bill, Pentagon has no choice except to cut on its personnel budget, Murtha said.

The Bush administration's war of choice. Their quagmire. Their blunder. Bush's legacy.

Whose sons are you going to send to fight your eternal war, Senator McCain?

Hey, that's what you signed up for, wasn't it?

Eternal war? You guys just stay over there and take care of things...



Talking about running for Bush's third term means I get to repost this pic:

Just only five more years

And somehow the magic wand will have fixed Iraq and its multiple civil wars, caught Osama, stomped on al-Qaeda, and spread the sparkily happy dust of democracy on everybody:

Republican presidential nominee John McCain today predicted that most US forces would withdraw from Iraq by 2013, after having helped shape the country into a "functioning democracy".

McCain's remarks, given in a speech in Columbus, Ohio, represent a turnaround from his widely publicised statement that US troops could be in that country for one hundred years, and could blunt Democrats' efforts to portray him as favouring long-term US engagement there.

"By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom," the Arizona senator said.

He described his hopes for the scenario in the country by the end of his first term in office: "The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering form the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension."

Amazing! Sounds cool!

But ... just HOW are you going to achieve this happy state of affairs, Senator McCain? With our broken military? With the Taliban ascendant in Afghanistan and Pakistan? With Saudi Arabia funding the Sunnis and al-Qaeda? With Iran funding and supporting the Shiites? With the fighting factions within each of these militias? Just how will you do this?

Are you going to attack Iran?



Just how many wars are you planning to start?



Or are you planning to stay in Iraq because of Vietnam?:

But the truth is that it's always about Vietnam for John McCain. He has invoked avoiding the mistakes of Vietnam with a sort of religious fervor in every important debate about dispatching U.S. troops since he first entered Congress in 1983. As he put it in an Aug. 18, 1999, speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he studies "every prospective conflict for the shadow of Vietnam." In fact, a look at his record shows that he subjects every major foreign-policy decision to a Vietnam-derived test similar to the famed Powell doctrine, a test summed up by the McCain quote, "We're in it, now we must win it."

So entrenched are those lessons that McCain sounds, at times, like he wishes they could be applied retroactively. "We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal," McCain said at a speech on Iraq at the Council on Foreign Relations on Nov. 5, 2003. And for that reason, it might be advisable to take him at his word when he says he'll stay in Iraq for 100 years. Whether Vietnam is the prism through which he judges national security decisions, or the rationale he uses to explain whatever position he decides to take -- and even if the lessons he says he's learned from Vietnam often seem contradictory -- he has applied his Vietnam test to Iraq and come up with the decision to stay.

If we never leave, we will never have to admit defeat, right?

So, are you planning to use nukes?

Next stop is Vietnam

Because the United States lost in Vietnam, by McCain's reasoning, we must compensate by staying in Iraq. We will never be defeated if we never leave.

So entrenched are those lessons that McCain sounds, at times, like he wishes they could be applied retroactively. "We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal," McCain said at a speech on Iraq at the Council on Foreign Relations on Nov. 5, 2003. And for that reason, it might be advisable to take him at his word when he says he'll stay in Iraq for 100 years. Whether Vietnam is the prism through which he judges national security decisions, or the rationale he uses to explain whatever position he decides to take -- and even if the lessons he says he's learned from Vietnam often seem contradictory -- he has applied his Vietnam test to Iraq and come up with the decision to stay.

[snip]

In fact, McCain has applied some lessons to Iraq that seem to conflict with earlier statements about Vietnam. He had previously said, in connection with Somalia, that staying in a war because chaos would ensue on American departure was not a good reason to stay. Last Tuesday, he said the U.S. needed to stay in Iraq because chaos would ensue if we left, as we learned in Vietnam. (And despite having shared in GOP rhetoric during the 1990s disparaging President Clinton's foreign policy initiatives as "nation building," he now publicly embraces remaining in Iraq to build democracy.

The prime lesson McCain seems to be applying to Iraq is that we need to stay in it to win it. In fact, McCain has argued that the United States' failure to adhere to that last maxim after a decade of war in Vietnam provides a "cautionary lesson" for the war in Iraq.

Some foreign policy experts think that the commitment of a large, long-term troop presence in Iraq does little to spark action in a lethargic political reconciliation process in Iraq, the ultimate key to success there. They draw a very different parallel with Vietnam. "It does not provide an endgame, which puts us right back in the problem of Vietnam in trying to push an ally or a host nation to try and change," explained Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "We are giving them the breathing space because of our large force numbers, but their belief is that because we have made such a large commitment, we are not going to leave, so they don't really have to change."

Hoffman said McCain is "right to invoke Vietnam, but he is drawing the wrong lesson ... People misapply history to fit their view of the world. This seems like another example."

So, what is 100 years, 10,000 years if we can declare victory at the end of it?

I have an idea. How about we change the meaning of the word 'victory' like the right has tried to change the word 'fascism' and has fuglied the word 'liberal'? We say victory means staying until ... oh... April 27th, 2008.

Then we hit the date, declare victory achieved, and leave.

Then those who need to can yell,"We've won!" We can have our parades for our soldiers, create a G.I. bill that supports our troops and restarts the economy, and begin rebuilding our country and our Constitution.

Ya think?

crossposted at SteveAudio

McBush makes his own reality

Just like he's seen it done for eight years:

Journalist Ron Suskind relates a chilling conversation he had in 2002 with a senior aide to George W. Bush, who taunted Suskind for being a person from “what we call the reality-based community.”

The Bush aide said this “reality-based community” consists of people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” Suskind nodded in agreement and muttered something favorable about the principles of the Enlightenment, only to be cut off by the aide.

“That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” the Bush aide told the journalist. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to study what we do.”

In many ways, that quote – cited in Suskind's New York Times Magazine article about Bush’s “faith-based presidency” – sums up the anti-rational arrogance that has become the hallmark of Bush’s inner circle, a group that apparently thinks that its actions transcend both law and reason.

For example, then:

CNN: Military Sources Respond To McCain's Escalation Remark With 'Laughter Down The Line'
Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told radio host Bill Bennett that President Bush's escalation is working. "There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today," he said. Today, when CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked McCain why Americans still aren't able to safely leave the Green Zone in Iraq, the senator replied that Blitzer was giving three-month-old talking points:

General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee. I think you oughta catch up. You are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. We certainly don't get it through the filter of some of the media.

But according to CNN reporter Michael Ware, who has been in Iraq for four years, McCain is "way off base." He stated, "To suggest that there's any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I'd love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll."

Ware also rebutted McCain's assertion that Petaeus travels in an unarmed humvee: "[I]n the hour since Sen. McCain's said this, I've spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There's multiple humvees around it, heavily armed."

Remember when McCain went shopping in Iraq? assisted by 100 Soldiers, 3 Blackhawks, 2 Apache Gunships. And what happened some to of the Iraqi shopkeepers?:

And on April 2, the day after McCain's photo op in Baghdad, some of the merchants from the largely Shiite market he had visited were murdered. They had gone north looking for work when they were ambushed and killed by Sunni Arab guerrillas.

And now:

Surely McCain was seeing the "surge is working" glass eye he has fixed in his skull when he told a town hall crowd this week, "We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says." And McCain backed up his claims with what he clearly considers his trump card: "I've seen the facts on the ground."

Well, he was just in Iraq for the eighth time since the war began, so he must know what he's talking about, right? Or was he merely seeing what he wanted to see, in order to become what he so desperately wants to be?

The most memorable example of McCain seeing what he wanted to see, of course, was his infamous stroll through Baghdad's central market last April, which he offered as proof of improved security. Remember the facts on the ground eyewitness account of his traveling companion, Rep. Mike Pence?

It was just like "a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime," reported Pence. Take away the 100 soldiers in armored Humvees and the three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships circling above and his comparison was spot on.

To the point

Go read Hecate.

Heads, he wins. Tails, you lose.

If the violence is up, we're winning. If the violence is down, we're winning. Why leave? It's so .... positive! And romantic!: (my bold)

President Bush gave warning yesterday that Iraq’s “fragile situation” required the US to maintain a strong military presence there, even as he defended the withdrawal of British troops from Basra, the scene of heavy fighting in recent days.

In an interview with The Times, he backed the Iraqi Government’s decision to “respond forcefully” to the spiralling violence by “criminal elements” and Shia extremists in Basra. “It was a very positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation that is willing to take on elements that believe they are beyond the law,” the President said.

One more of the twenty civil wars being fought in Iraq

Obviously we need to stay in Iraq to prevent/help the sectarian vs. nationalist bloc from/to realizing we're stealing their oil/ unite in an United Iraqi democracy....

While the majority of Iraqis know that the current Sunni-Shiites tension did not exist before 2003, no one can deny that after five years of U.S. occupation, sectarian tension is now a reality. Sectarianism is another disaster that was brought to Iraq by the war and occupation of Iraq.

The U.S.-led invasion did not only destroy the Baath political regime, it also annihilated the entire public sector including education, health care, food rations, social security, and the armed forces. The Iraqi public sector was a great example of how millions of Iraqis: Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, Muslims and Christians, religious and secular, all worked together in running the country. The myth that the former Iraqi government was a "Sunni-led dictatorship" was created by the U.S. government. Even the Iraqi political regime was not "Sunni-led," let alone the rest of the public sector. A good way to debunk this fairy tale is through a close look at the famous deck of cards of the 55 most wanted Iraqi leaders. The cards had the pictures of Saddam, his two sons, and the rest of the political leadership which most Iraqis would recognize as the heads of the political regime. What is noteworthy is that 36 of the 55 were Shiites. In fact, the two vice presidents were a Christian and a Shiites Kurd.

Sometimes I feel like Iraqis and Americans are analyzing two different wars happening in two different countries. In one narrative, there is a civil war based on ancient sectarian hatred where a U.S. withdrawal will cause the sky to fall. In the other, there is a country struggling under occupation to get its independence back where the occupation is not welcomed and it is causing political, not sectarian, splits and violence.

According to the Iraqi mainstream narrative, the foreign occupation is the major reason and cause for violence and destruction. Foreign intervention is not only destroying Iraq's infrastructure, but it is also splitting Iraq's formerly integrated society. In addition, Iraqis are fighting among each other over fundamental questions about the future of their country, but the central conflict is not between Sunnis and Shiites, it is between Iraqi separatists and nationalists. Unlike other countries in the region such as Lebanon, the Iraqi sectarian tension is still reversible, because it just started five years ago. More importantly, it isn't main driver fueling the Iraqi-Iraqi conflict. This "hidden" conflict is between separatists and nationalists.

Turning around... and around... and around

Bush:

Making some of his most expansive claims of success in Iraq, he said the increase of 30,000 troops that he ordered to Iraq last year has turned "the situation in Iraq around."

Headline:

'We live in a nightmare. Death and carnage is everywhere' Ali, Baghdad resident

And another:

80,000 Angry Men. Is the US Surge collapsing?

In an investigation carried out by GuardianFilms for Channel 4, we uncover how thousands of Iraqis employed at $10 a day by the US to take on al-Qaida are threatening to go on strike because they say they have been used by the 'Americans to do their dirty work' and haven't been paid

Life in Baghdad:

Before they leave, Crocker and Commanding General David Petraeus, who also remains in office until January 2009, will have to deliver another report to Congress in April and explain to lawmakers what the US troop surge has achieved. After the summer of 2007, the number of attacks declined by half, but then it remained stable. There were just under 2,000 attacks every month from November to January, or about as many as in the spring of 2005.

The prognoses are relatively worthless as long as it is unclear what exactly the results of the turnaround have been. Optimists point to successes among Sunnis. Close to 80,000 former Sunni insurgents have changed sides and now work for the Americans, each of them earning $300 a month. Al-Qaida terrorism has been dealt a serious blow.

But skeptics warn against being too optimistic too soon when it comes to the Shiites. Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr has extended his Mahdi militia's cease-fire, which is indisputably the main reason for the drop in sectarian murders. But no one knows whether the cease-fire is merely a strategic move, or whether it will last.

The progress of the war has long depended on both people and developments no one would have imagined five years ago. General Tommy Franks, who directed the US invasion of Iraq, merely rolled his eyes when he was asked at the time what would happen after the war, former US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith writes in his upcoming autobiography "War and Decision." Franks' response to the question was that he didn't have time for that kind of "bullshit." Indeed, there are failures everywhere Feith casts his eyes. But, as the reader soon learns, Feith is convinced that the triumvirate of planners -- then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, President George W. Bush and Feith himself -- was infallible.

None of these retrospective quibbles appear to worry the president. "The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency," he said last week in Nashville. "It is the right decision at this point in my presidency, and it will forever be the right decision."

So?

What you said to Senator Patrick Leahy and then some, Dick!

Amanda Terkel of Alternet:

This opposition to the war is not a "fluctuation" in public opinion. The American public has steadily turned against the war since the 2003 invasion. According to a new CNN poll, just 36 percent of the American public believes that "the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over -- down from 68 percent in March 2003, when the war began."

Even though he doesn't care what the American public wants, Cheney still thinks he is able -- and entitled -- to speak for the American public. Last month, Cheney declared, "The American people will not support a policy of retreat." If Cheney were actually listening to the "American people," he would know that 61 percent actually supports the redeployment of U.S. troops.

You certainly don't speak for me, Mr. Not-part-of-the-executive-branch-and-not-part-of- the-legislative-branch-mystery-government-official-person!

When reality hits

It's always unpleasant...

The Iraq war

This will be George Bush's legacy: The Iraq quagmire, the Bush blunder, the unnecessary war, the war of choice, the attack on a sovereign nation that had not attacked us on 9/11/01. None of the multitudinous reasons .... excuses.... given for our being there have ever been found to be true.

The neocons told us this war was what they wanted long before Bush was president; while Clinton was president, they sent him a signed letter asking we take on Iraq. Many of us guessed that when Bush was given power, we would be at war with Iraq within two years. This projection was made without the fantastic excuse of 9/11.

9/11 didn't actually change anything except for our sense of superiority. We finally joined the rest of the world in coping with terrorism within our own borders. Our foreign policies had finally come home to roost.

So Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz finally got their war. It will be fast! And cheap! The oil will pay for everything! Saddam is bad! He mocked George Bush senior! His moustache is evil! The neocons were indifferent to anything but what they were about to get their hands on.

So the country literally came apart. Very much like what happened in Yugoslavia, old enmities rose up once the dictator was gone. Foreign insurgents flooded in, religious differences began to show, tribal loyalities became strong. Instead of fighting one enemy in one war, there were suddenly twenty wars with fifty different reasons going on. It became a civil war.

And Bush had deliberately opened the Pandora's box. Without a real plan. They thought Chalabi, who had been groomed to pop into place, could just slip into Hussein's spot. But somehow the people didn't want him. Several 'leaders' later, no one is able to unify the factions that now control the country, or even get any kind of agreement between the sockpuppet politicians to vote together. When Bush complains that the Iraqis aren't doing enough to get the government going, the response is, "What Iraqi government?" Many of the pseudo politicians that were voted in with purple fingers are actually out of the country. If the people do not support the government, there is no government. I guess that's a hard concept for George.

So now we have been there five years. What have we accomplished? What have we done? We have a tenuous peace with al-Sadr who has agreed to a ceasefire. We have teamed up with the very people who were shooting at our soldiers just a few months ago to help them shoot at the al-Qaeda... who were not in Iraq until we attacked. We are balancing a dangerous tightrope between the Saudi-supported Sunni and the Iranian-supported Shiite, trying to prevent Iran from taking over a huge section of Iraq. Saudi Arabia is sending insurgents and an immense amount of money into Iraq to fight .... our soldiers, yet we are supportive of the Saudi government and have offered them a huge arms deal. More and more tangled loyalities confuse the issue. There is no one 'bad guy' to defeat. I haven't even mentioned the Kurds and Turkey.

So. How do we 'win' this fight? How do we win this war? How do we extricate ourselves from this quagmire?

John McCain says we will be there for hundreds of years.

Both Democratic candidates say we will leave.

As we ponder this conundrum, bombs are going off and soldiers and civilians are dying. All because of Bush.

This will be his enduring legacy.

The Iraq war.

The word 'Probably' is the new 'Oops'

Or even 'I fucked up but I'm a Republican so I never have to admit to a mistake'.

Via Thers at Whiskey Fire, Think Progress:

During a town hall meeting in Muskogee, Oklahoma this past weekend, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) admitted that it was “a mistake” for the United States to invade Iraq in 2003. “I will tell you personally that I think it was probably a mistake going to Iraq,” Coburn told the crowd.

WTF?

Are you guys going to be soon saying things like, "You know, that whole Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld thing was probably a mistake"? Or, "You know, fucking up a sovereign nation that had nothing to do with 9/11, bombing the hell out of innocent people, getting the whole world to think we've gone mad, galvanizing millions more would be terrorists to start taking sides... now THAT was probably a mistake."

Ya think, Senator Coburn? Probably?

I wrote this in August of 2007

So the very shaky U.S. backed al-Maliki's Shiite government which had Sunnis resigning out of the so-called Iraqi Parliament because the Shiite government is being shored up by Sunni-killing Shiite death squads and al-Sadr which our military promptly attacked while al-Maliki was out of Iraq visiting Shiite Iran to start meaningful diplomatic ties which really freaks Sunni Saudi Arabia who is sending their radicalized Sunni youth to attack Americans in Iraq yet Saudi Arabia has been promised an immense delivery of jets and weapons by the United States which made Russia promise Iran a boatload of weaponry as well which makes no sense to weaponize the Middle East because it is so volatile but it makes perfect sense to Bush to sell weapons to the country that supplied 15 of the 9/11 hijackers so they can claim part of the Iraq that we invaded because of 9/11 but had nothing to do with 9/11 while we ignore Afghanistan which is returning to the Taliban which harbors Osama bin Laden and probably will destablize Pakistan who has nukes.

Has the surge worked yet because it seems that nothing has changed....

720 Million a day

In Iraq.

Think what we could do with our tax money if we weren't having to fight Bush's Mother of All Quagmires....