Asia Times Online "Surging Towards The Holy Oil Grail"

[go west young man]

http://Surging toward the holy oil grail
By Pepe Escobar

"I see the imminent death of 20,000 men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds ...
O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth."
Hamlet, Act IV; according to White House spin part of reading-adverse President George W Bush's book list during the summer of 2006.

And so, after a tsunami surge of spin, US President George W



Bush is heading toward escalation, summoning his 21,500 men, supported by barely 11% of Americans. Escalation in Iraq is the name of the president's game, and that also applies to Somalia - the new Afghanistan.

In far from accidental timing, the good old "war on terror" is back from the grave (nobody really related to the "long war" newspeak). After all, the galleries had to be reminded that there's a Pentagon-concocted "arc of instability" running from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East and then to the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Himalayas. The "war on terror" has expanded to the business of killing Africans, now afforded membership of the ever-expanding "axis of evil".

Bush, in front of a stack of books he never reads, blamed al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni Arab resistance and "Shi'ites supported by Iran" for his failures; committed five more brigades to Baghdad and 4,000 extra troops to guerrilla and al-Qaeda-controlled al-Anbar province. As if these shock troops will be enough to pursue the "fight against terror". Bush's plan ultimately breaks down to a slightly bulkier US militia in Iraq capable of killing more Arabs.

www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA12Ak05.html