Bush's Latest Plan To Perpetuate His Bloody Iraq Failure

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ron_full_070108_bush_s_latest_plan_t.htm

by Ron Fullwood


"For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have." --Shakespeare


Bush 'new' plan for Iraq will reportedly be presented to the American public on Wednesday - over 70% of whom disagree with Bush's present handling of the occupation. Not surprisingly, the reported details Bush will unveil signal his intention to dig our soldiers even deeper into the Iraq quagmire as he looks to accomplish many of the same unrealistic goals which he's sacrificed over 3,000 American lives to achieve in the almost 4 years since the initial invasion.

Some of the 'benchmarks' reported by the NYT which Bush intends to present are: provincial elections in the Sunni areas of Iraq, the crafting of a oil agreement to spread the revenue among the various factions, and an effort to bring back some of the Batthists who were initially excluded from government and military participation in the new regime.

All of these 'benchmarks' would be facilitated by Bush's planned influx of reinforcements for the beleaguered U.S. troops already hunkered down there. "This is not an open-ended commitment," the NYT quoted one senior administration official as saying. Yet, there doesn't appear to be any concrete goal that Bush could reasonably set for the preservation and development of the new Iraqi regime which could be achieved with the numbers of additional soldiers contemplated by Bush (20,000 troops), or with the 10,000, or so, the Pentagon is indicating are combat-ready and available to deploy.

More troubling is the report today from CNN that Bush is considering "phasing in" the 20,000 soldiers he wants to send to Iraq. Instead of a temporary "surge" of troops for a specific mission, as our Democratic leaders have said they would consider on merit, Bush is reportedly going to try to slip them into Iraq in stages. One reason for the incremental escalation may be a basic lack of available combat-ready soldiers. Another reason may be that Bush is just exercising the same deceptive manipulation of his authority which he used to talk our nation into Iraq in the first place. Maybe he thinks no one will notice that he's put more of our nation's defenders' lives on the line for his discredited occupation if he dribbles them in a few at a time.