George W. Bush: Gambler Who Has Run Out of Luck

[unhappycamper]

George W. Bush: Gambler Who Has Run Out of Luck
By William Waack

Translated By Brandi Miller

January 29, 2007
O Globo, Brazil

Haifa Street was to Baghdad what the Rua Augusta is for Sao Paulo or the Nossa Senhora de Copacabana is for Rio: it had seen better days but it continued to be an intense mixture of businesses and residences ... until the 2003 invasion. Today it's a living symbol of what Iraq has become: just meters from the most fortified area of the city - downtown - it is the most dangerous area for both American troops and average Iraqis. Only terrorized families with nowhere else to go still live on Haifa Street - an area disputed by Sunni and Shiite militias, both of which are against the Americans.

"To stabilize" this street seems as distant as creating a stable and united Iraq before the next U.S. presidential election at the end of 2008. Judging by accounts of war correspondents from various European and American publications, to the common soldier stationed in Baghdad, pacifying Haifa Street has became synonymous with the word impossible. It is where a simple shot, according to a recent New York Times headline, makes all the difference - in favor of the rebels.

If left up to the American Congress, Haifa Street will remain this way, or will soon become a problem almost exclusively of the Iraqi government. As it is, President George W. Bush doesn't have the support of Senate Republican for sending 22,000 more troops to Baghdad. There are high-level American military commanders with ample experience in Iraq that say patience and a change in tactics will eventually allow one to again have tea and walk with a stroller on Haifa Street - but this is a bet.

The trouble is that no one wants to wager on Bush. The big change in the Iraq War over the past few months is the situation in the United States. There was never a lack of protest (those in New York in 2004, for example, were much bigger than those held last Saturday, January 27, in Washington RealVideo) nor a lack of important voices incessantly denouncing the disaster brought about by the President. But today there is a consensus between Republicans and Democrats that didn't exist even in the last moments of the Vietnam War.

The current president is a "gambler," a risk taker with faith - above all in himself - that has run out of luck. And at the moment of defeat, Bush is becoming even more dangerous, raising the stakes when everyone else reckons it's time to back away from the table. His last set of commands suggests that he sees Iran as the main instigator of the immense difficulty of "pacifying" Iraq. Bush's instructions that "Iranian agents" should be treated like Iraqi insurgents - that is, shoot first and ask questions later – will not be decisive to the current military situation, but it is instructive of what is going on in the brain of the man who is still the world's most powerful.

http://watchingamerica.com/oglobo000015.shtml

[Demeter]

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