GHOST OF SHINSEKI

It is not surprising that Daddy Baker's ISG report is being shredded, vilified, savaged, lacerated, tarnished, decried, dismissed and detested seemingly by everyone with an agenda or a political candidacy offwing because for the most part it probably deserves it-- One factoid surfacing out the frenzied maelstrom of the blathersphere last week centered on the Green Zone fortress in Iraq where all the visiting fact-finding dignitaries both political and military(ret.) from the American Elite go to receive their briefings from the elegantly housed and fed US Ambassadorial staffers and their hardworking anonymous Iraqi servants(anonymous because some whose employment by the Americans should it become known even by their immediate family could result in death/dismemberment for many involved) -- Of all those visiting dignitaries only Chuck Robb ventured outside the Green Zone ostensibly to see just how insecure the streets of the real Baghdad really are-- Very few in the Baker Group and very few of those providing information to the group have actually seen the real boots on the ground Iraq-- Their testimony has to be considered suspect-- Their information tainted, incomplete and insufficient-- How far behind the real events befalling Iraq daily is their intel??-- And how exactly would they know it??--

With heavy hitters like Kissinger weighing in on the impossibility of military 'victory' it seems only natural that those imperial true-believer Neocons, who so ardently professed and predicted effortlessly easy military victory at the outset of what has become, despite the rigorous fantasm of denial, the greatest foreign policy debacle in the short history of this great nation, would rise in dispute of what must be a canard inspired by insufficient intelligence at best-- After all Doctor Kissengenuous as well as the Baker ilk and certainly including the feebly backboned US Congress led by demie milktoast Harry Reid, would most assuredly be averse to strolling Baghdad's Sadr City or, say, the boulevards of Anbar Province for a first hand assessment of the lack of security and lack of a genuine nation-state-- Why should anybody still believing in Hail Mary passes and miraculous intercession succumb to the notion of defeat even while being slapped in the face by it??--God knows none of the Neocons and their ardent supporters believed in the serious war-of-civilization rhetoric enough to risk anything very important like , say, enlisting their own sons or daughters for a little first hand danger in this wonderful think-tank crusade-- So why is the 'Victory' rhetoric any less delusional than that of the 'Defeatist'??--Since the intel that initiated this spectacular failure was 'fixed' as the Downing Street memo stated why is there any reason to believe any intel coming out of the Green Zone or DC proper??-- Careers are at stake here not truth even with a lower case 't'-- It seems like the 79-step Baker plan is competing now with dozens of other plans from well intentioned career-driven Beltway warriors whose current paradigm is incapable of reconnoitering the actual depth of chaos deeply embedded in the dust the rubble and the vicious violent anger now constantly engulfing the real terrain of this destroyed and murdered country--

So here comes Kagan and Kristol demanding many more American troops (the ones coming from other families and lower classes) to delay recognizing the defeat that has already occurred for at least the next two years under the aegis of 'victory' a strategery parlanced by the nakedly strange and wanting term....'Surge'....Just the verb or noun to confidently convey an ensured success-- The reason America is 'not winning' the war and 'not losing' the war is patently obvious to these erudite fantasists...We just haven't been surging enough---

The next Surger to the fore is not Kristol's Kagan but the emminent Frederick W. Kagan championing 50,000 additional troops and Kristol so enthralled by the plan fails to explicate for or from Frederick's 50,ooo man plan where these troops would deploy from or what exactly their mission so far undefined by nearly everyone certainly in DC-- Kristol demurs whether we even need to know what any of this posturing actually entails-- Trust us, they wink--

General Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff, your turn, the deadly neocon lecturn awaits... and we know you are not alone, Mr. Kristol/Kagan have informed us mightily-- "A few months ago, Army Maj. General Paul Eaton, who until his retirement had been in charge of building up the Iraqi Security Forces, told Senate Democrats (and all too obviously some republicans)what they didn't want to hear: that American force levels in Iraq were not nearly high enough, and that "we are, conservatively, 60,000 soldiers short."-- After Eaton Kristol/Kagan line up their big guns foremost the truly and completely unbiased Wall Street Journal which recently reported (italics, mine) "most military officers . . . seem to believe that a pullback of U.S. forces would only trigger more violence and make political compromise in the country impossible. These officers argue that 20,000 U.S. troops are needed to bring order to Baghdad. Another 10,000 U.S. soldiers would also be needed" presumably as, now indispensible to success, trainers and advisers to the Iraqi army. As the Journal reports, the officers "bristle at the idea that it is too hard or impossible." And now their most vainglorious attempt to rub the skeptics noses into their own defeatism the Kristol/Kagan duo trot out a comment not exactly buffing up their premise by ret. General Anthony Zinni an Iraq war opponent from the get-go and who was vilified as a traitor among other pejoratives by the neocon smear-squads when he stood up valiantly and demanded ret. Def Sec Rumsfeld resign due to abject incompetence-- His quote by the New York Times, "There is a premise that the Iraqis are not doing enough now, that there is a capability that they have not employed or used. I am not so sure they are capable of stopping sectarian violence." Splicing into this a later quote "it would make more sense to consider deploying additional American forces over the next six months to 'regain momentum' as part of a broader effort to stabilize Iraq that would create more jobs, foster political reconciliation and develop more effective Iraqi security forces."--

Nowhere in the the article do Kristol/kagan find an explicit defining of the mission or the tactics other than a less than resonant "regain momentum"-- When and where exactly did US effort lose this momentum??-- Was it lack of troops or did the resourceful and resilient nsurgency have something to do with it??-- Zinni, one would wager, would most likely agree that the troops who control the time and the terrain on which they do battle are the troops with the momentum--This backhanded slur against the incredible effort put forth by American troops so far given their impossible and undefined mission (for accuracy's sake the mission has been constantly defined and then redefined ad infinauseum ) is disgustingly deployed to expiate the Neocons impending realization of the guilt they must assume for their failure-- It can't be the neocons who caused all this-- The plan was ideal-- Cheney endorsed it and so did Blair and let's not forget Olmert and Netanyahu-- Rumsfeld can only be scapegoated for a short while longer--

Kristol/kagan spared us a presidential endorsement for Sen. McCain his off the blocks electoral posture calling for the ubiquitous 30,000 but again no defining mission-- Entering from offstage in this Shakespearean tragedy replete with its perfected art of dissembling comes the ghost of General Erik Shinseki to remind us of his soothsaying truth-- Occupation of Iraq would require 350,000 troops at a minimum-- This credo spoken to Bush's lackey congress was predicated, (reiterate, predicated) on keeping the Iraqi army intact-- The minute the army was disbanded the perfect neocon plan went dead in the water-- Shinseki knew then as he does today that with the Iraqi army disbanded 350,000 troops would never be nearly enough-- Now these duplicitously erudite careerist bastards want you to believe an extra 20, 30 or, 'oh wow', even 60,ooo troops will conjure a missing Christmas miracle--All these troop numbers are a complete charade-- Victory never has been right around the corner-- To send a surge of new troops into this hideously violent maelstrom would be to emulate the war criminality of disgraced Israeli politician Ehud Olmert who sent thousands of Israeli troops ill-trained and ill-equipped as well as ill-fed into Hezbollah's bunkered buzzsaw knowing full well a cease fire was in the pipeline and agreed upon already-- But he did it anyway primarily so he could posture he was cheated out of an imminent victory he was never really in range of by blaming the pacifists, or the Americans or whatever other scapegoat du jour these devolving hacks choose to employ-- Our tactics failed to stop the sectarian violence and now the strategeries want the Us to train the Iraqis to employe dour tactics???-- Common sense????--

Kristol/Kagan have saved their ultimate scapegoat (rightfully but not singly so) for last--

President Bush, on the other hand, wants to succeed, and he has staked
his presidency and his legacy for decades to come on the success of the
Iraq mission..... Now he needs to display a different kind of courage. He has to
take into his own hands the fate of Iraq and make his own decisions about what
needs to be done. ... he must also know that his advisers, both civilian and
military, have been failing him for the past three years. American policy, if it
is to have any hope of turning the tide, must change dramatically in the next
month or two. No one other than President Bush can make that change. No one other
than the president can insist on policies that would save Iraq now. It is up to
him to seize the moment. (At least, they appear to understand the urgency)

There it is in a nutshell-- The weak knee-ed military advisors have failed the President-- The cut and runners have failed the President-- The concerned reliable American citizenry has failed the President-- The underarmored underequipped and underappreciated troops have failed the President-- The neocon warriors esconced in their mahogany think-tanks are in danger of being failed by the President--The same President who lent his susceptible tin-ear to their deluded pipedream in the first place-- Here is more

That means the
president will have to be, much more than he has been, his own general and
strategist. He will have to decide on his own that incremental measures, such as
stepping up the pace of Iraqi training, will not make enough of a difference in a
short enough time to prevent a collapse of American policy and of Iraq itself.He
will have to decide, contrary to the advice of many of his top advisers,
that many more American troops need to be sent to Iraq, and as quickly as
possible.

George Bush is the only man who can save himself, America, Iraq and then render history's verdict a positive one for the Neocon Project of a New American Century-- George Bush must do this on his own????-- There is no one left for the Kristol/kagan tandem to trust-- He's the only non-defeatist still standing in the mahogany dream--The man who quit the Air National Guard before his duty was finished now must do his duty as well as everybody else's and pronto!!!-- He must become his 'own general'????... Pardon please Messers. Kristol/Kagan, but what kind of unadulterated (pardon the expression) horseshit is that??-- Will he turn on a dim dime and, say, emulate who....Grant?... Sherman?.... Patton?.... Rommel?.... Montgomery?..... Dare I mention Lee?... How about general Cheney???-- Bush must become his 'own strategerist'???-- Yeah, like that's a possible reality!!!-- What Bush must really save are Kristol/ Kagan et. al.-- He must save them from the truth...... with a capital 'T'--

Surge Time!!!.... ETA: Early 2007--All, Aboard!!!!!!