HARPIES

Mr. Bush desperately pleads a threadbare case for his Surge supported all around by Neocon sycophants extolling the moderate success achieved in Anbar Province temporarily utilizing Sunni Tribal groups tenuously allied to US troops in an effort to combat Al Qaeda in Iraq-- Still a lethally earnest number, attacks have dropped by nearly 50% to around 26/day in the largely homogeneous Sunni region but Neocon dream-tank pundits and poseurs around the blather-sphere extrapolate much too simplistically from this unique alliance a template of tide-turning success which will rescue the inefficacy of the under-manned Surge countrywide and lead to the wild possibility of miraculous Victory--

To issue such craven nostrums in vain attempt to secure phantom success only prolongs the agony of all those touched by the mad fire of this fiasco-- The positive side-effect to this inchoate spin is to ultimately dodge historical judgement and condemnation for their haughty role in the slaying and criminal dismemberment of Iraq and to do so for as long as possible-- Never mind that such fictive constructs shield only the frightened purveyor and his vanity from the commonly obvious-- It is quite understandable, to say the least, as who amongst the status-competitive elites actually craves going down in history as an irredeemable loser or a pre-meditative war criminal-- The most amiable tactic, and quite often the most futile, to usually surface from the commingling of such fear and perverse pride is the proverbial grasping for nearest available straw-- Desperate in the extreme and void of any honor the incapacity of facing up to and accepting the responsibility for the insensate damage and hellacious suffering they have inflicted upon thousands of innocent people escapes these innocuous ideologues and drives the most bogus of their alternatives..... Salvaging faux reputations-- Hail, Mary, full of grace.......--

In this time of patently visible political debility, Mr. Bush finds himself in the unfortunate and certainly unenviable position of now having to find fortitude enough to fend off the incredibly deranged overtures coming from the bloated and frustrated Vice President, Mr. Cheney, .............. to bomb Iran!!!!-- The urge to change the subject from the ongoing disintegration in Iraq to another venue offering last chance victory options for a moribund political echelon would be sorely tempting especially with the fanatical and omnipresent chortling of apple-polishing AIPAC toadies like Mr. Kristol, Mr. Krauthammer, the Kagan clan and, of course, the mealy mongering Mr. Lieberman all of whose delusional epistles, uttered wildly into the militant mix of despair like Hitchcock-ian mad harpies, only wind up grating hysterically on the exposed nerve of nearly everyone in the extant world--

Bombing Iran may appear like salvation to those whose political tenure, the ineffable lineage of sequentially incompetent failure, offers no legislative ransom but only sullen deadlock-- Bleakly it seeps away with clock-like inevitability while the parade of desertion from its officers offers absolutely no positive prospects for posterity in the tortuous time remaining-- Warned that an aerial attack on Iran may easily backfire on and, worst case scenario, destroy Western Civilization's economy and influence globally but, hey, one sardonic benefit to such a perilous side-effect would be to shut the traps of those idiot shrews mentioned above-- Does Mr. Bush bear backbone enough to buck Mr. Cheney??-- It doesn't appear to be the case attendant the Libby commutation-- Time will tell--

The multiplication of murder and the massive explosions in the northern city of Kirkuk yesterday offers stark antidote to the vague canards of success offered by the White House in recent days-- While 80% of remaining Iraqis lack access to sanitation facilities, insurgents there possess the ability to strike any and everywhere inside the disintegrating country and in the not too distant future insurgents in Pakistan may possess such redundant capability themselves-- The Turks not just idly rattling sabers are gathering good numbers of troops on the northern border-world of Iraq with, perhaps, an eye toward the oil fields, but in terms of real politik, The Turks really cannot afford homage to the Rosy Scenario whore being pimped by Neocon dream-tanks devoid of logistical reality and praying for time-- American aims, most acutely those critical to the survival of Iraq, continue to go unrealized and the Turks, who are not afraid to actually ascertain and act on such intel, exercise their courage in preparation--

Positing fairy tale as fact prevents alternative policy plans from being postulated and possibly implemented but beyond the dubious pretense of smiley-face optimism comes the Grim Reaper and his roster of freshly dead spent to sustain such fictional folly-- The specter of Tet raises a reminder to stew minds besieged by the rumors of catastrophe and the demoralization attendant DC's spin crews-- Reports now circulating suggest General Petraeus is seeking an immediate alternative policy direction away from the failed tactical strategy of Bush's Surge-- Wasting precious time until September is not a viable option on the killing grounds of Iraq-- The pro-Surge pundit-ocracy is apparently busy defending a position no longer applicable asking for time no longer available-- A step and a half behind events, reactive before pro-active, coming in on a wing and a prayer-- Hard landing awaits--

Alluding constantly to future chaos, rampant bloodletting and mindless vengeance that would attend withdrawal of American Troops allows the unconcerned to ignore the degree to which this insidious mayhem and collapse already exists as a direct result of the initial Occupation and an ongoing response to the vagaries of its unplanned operations-- That both the White House and the Congress either cannot perceive this or simply opt to ignore it through rhetorical charades and the omnipresent art of plausible deniability is testimony to the bankrupt venality and self-serving vacuity of posturing US leadership and it bodes ominously for the stability of our imminent future--

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SPINNING DEFEAT

"We can afford a strategic defeat in Iraq, and a diplomatic reversal, but what we can't afford is a perception of a military defeat," Former Army intelligence specialist Ralph Peters says, "Given how our security is intertwined with the region, we must at a minimum make it clear that our military has not been defeated." That others in the region have long seen the inefficacy of applied military force in establishing democracy in Iraq as a serious strategic defeat incapable of being divorced from the military tactic or lack thereof employed in service to that strategy, it might only now be news to Mr. Peters-- How do we "make it clear our military has not been defeated"....annihilate the Sadr City slums??-- Emulate the Israeli thrust into southern Lebanon in the final hours of last summer's IDF defeat??-- Striking Iran with aerial bombardment seems more like petulant confirmation of the very defeat, perception cannot afford--Tasked to execute the Bush Neocon strategy of bringing ringing democracy to Iraq and thereby transforming the entire middle east has become impossible to achieve-- Maybe not a classic definition but defeat nonetheless and the whole region trepidatiously knows it--

Worrying about perceptions and appearances of military defeat instead of the actual defeat itself and what can be done to repair the real damage is a vain intellectual expedition to no good but a self-deceptive end-- The military defeat that Mr. Peters feigns acknowledging in no way reflects on troop performance-- They were committed to a situation they were untrained for and to a mission whose goalposts were constantly shifted for political reasons until the mission itself fell to irrelevance in the face of the sectarian war none of our esteemed leaders could ever figure out whose side if any they would join-- The camouflage of denial hides as well the blow our confidence must unavoidably suffer when a factual admission of technological under-performance couples itself to the military setback-- The strategery itself was built on using military coercion once it became clear the Sunni elements of Iraq especially after losing their military livelihoods and self respect were not keen to welcome our troops as the newsreel liberators American war salesmen had trumpeted them to be-- Unfriendly as well as friendly governments, tribal leaders and sectarian allies in the region would not kowtow in abject fear of the unmatched US firepower unleashed in the savage crescendo of Shock and Awe opening this Eternal War and would not cede control to the under-armored, under-equipped and under-manned US troops but would aid and abet the Sunni insurgents and the Shiite militias not to mention oddball psychotics like al-Zarquawi who seemed to appear suddenly and without warning proliferating mayhem everywhere like a violently a contagious fungus--

Every Iraqi with a grievance and there were manymany, legitimate or not, watched the blustery American President on worldwide television from the hubris laden security of the White House incite them and instigate them to vicious action and random murder-- "Well Bring It On!!!!"-- And On they have brought it but not at the tempo our amply skilled troops trained for-- and not on terrain our courageous troops expected and certainly not with any lack of courage and fight the cloistered Neocons once reserved only for those anachronistic Rumsfeldian 'deadenders' who couldn't quite get with the surrender program-- In fact there was never any surrender-- Just a rooster strut down an aircraft carrier in glowing hollywood twilight and a declaration of combat cessation before the war really began--The insurgency metastasized like cancer-- The Sunnis began to fight for their lives-- Without oil profits they are dead-- Why wouldn't they fight ferociously--

Mr. Peters, templates exist from the last half of the last century right up to the present day delineating how weak little insurgent guerrillas may stalemate powerful armies of rich and more techno-advanced states and in some cases expel them from their bases of occupation-- The deadender outcasts of the world know now as before lining up toe-to-toe with world power armies out in the open is a prescription for failure--Sometimes merely staying alive to fight another day acts as a military defeat for the Occupation even if a super knockout blow never arrives as in Afghanistan-- Sometimes the sophisticated media savvy these so-called anti-modern fifth-century fanatics employ inestimably out-performs a vaunted Abrams tank--Cunningly the insurgency frustrates the Occupier because the aggressor has to win quickly as the costs of continuing operations in men and material climb at least somewhat exponentially-- Two billion dollars a week now in Iraq nearly ten billion a month including Afghanistan--Sometimes it is better to bleed the enemy than kill him-- The first maxim of Guerrilla warfare is Never Be In A Hurry--

The aggressor/occupier must knock out the opponent as quickly as possible and in the case of Iraq the inability to arrive at the second stage of occupation where job creation and infrastructure repairs would give the iraqi undecideds an alternative to insurgency can't happen because lack of security won't logistically allow it-- Security crackdowns by foreign doorbusters that inevitably lead to revenge and basic physical hunger drive the decisions of those who climb off the fence starved of neutrality and join the mayhem--The inability to restore pre-war electrical capability alienated the relatively cushy Sunni middle class who awoke the next day to discover their employment in the Iraqi state-run industries had been dissolved-- With friends like Bremer why they would refuse to climb aboard the American Liberation train is inescapably obvious, little if any common sense needs PhD credentials to figure this out--

Not only did the Sunnis lose their jobs and their oil, they lost their government in tainted elections to their historical enemies, the Shiites-- That the Iraqi Shiites might be mutually receptive to help as in arms and money and intel and training from Iranian Shia somehow seemed lost on the Bush warcons-- An obviously de-stabilized Iraq not recently under a pro-Iranian rule but from the purple finger get-go of the elections Bremer and Bush forced on the Sunni and it seems Mr. Bush is only now becoming cognizant of the fact that our invasion and occupation actually elevated Iran into a position of huge regional influence-- Surprisingly now only to those neocons still not fully aroused from the slumber of their truculent illusions but the subsequent politically charged demonization of Amadinejhad only increased the Iranian power and middle eastern resistance to the US-- The best laid plans of mice and men...............

The deterioration of the oil infrastructure and failure to secure the pipelines eliminated a once lucrative source-potential to defray the redoubling cost of the entire mistaken enterprise-- All the while the Def Sec, the State Sec and the White House espoused a ham-fisted recalcitrant denial that an insurgency even existed-- Even amidst charges the Def Sec was excessively micro-managerial this almost paralytic refusal to acknowledge the insurgency enveloped the war cabinet in an air of acute denial from which it couldn't act (Even Mr. Rogers can say 'civil war'--)How can they alter failing tactics if they refuse to see basic problems in realistic light??-- Is this a strategic or a tactical failure??--Does it matter, if those tactically experienced boots on the ground tasked to implement a successful occupation, to "impose our will on Iraq"(Bremer) have to submit to inexperienced supervision from civilian hacks employed only because they correctly answered the "Roe Versus Wade" litmus test??-- How out of touch with reality is this??--The canard that we just didn't use our massive firepower in a brutal enough way or that our rules of engagement hamstrung our soldiers doesn't explain why the Russians with all their brutality and weaponry at their disposal and a willingness to use them freely (with the exception of nukes) have failed to thwart the Chechnyan resistance--

The fact is, Mr Peters, if the world perceives us as weak, it is not mis-perception because we are weak-- Explosive capability isn't the only measure of strength nor in many cases is it the most effective-- The Neocon architects and the Big Money behind their indulgent mahogany think-tanks and sycophantic cheer-leading media and all the professional go-along-to-get-along politicians and their elitist health-insured fund-raising staffs and the double-dipping palm-greasing defense industry moguls and the money grubbing lobbyists sitting this one out sipping wine in some stylish and richly gated community in a suburban enclave somewhere sunny did not see fit to engage any of their offspring in the quintessential Battle of Civilization in the most decisive ideological struggle in our history-- (The one honorable exception to my knowledge is Senator James Webb and I'm sure quite a number of others unbeknownst to me echo the risk of such sacrifice to which I salute)-- But when the only voices raised to protest the ugly treatment our individual soldiers experience at the careering hands of the military court martial system are the young men's families and the vigilant heroic work being done at http://jaghunters.blogspot.com/ something is seriously off-kilter here-- This is more than an affordable "diplomatic reversal".....way more--

Mr. Peters, by any other definition this inability to accept the idea of defeat still denotes weakness-- The urge to 'spin' defeat into something else is not strength in eyes of those you seek to fool-- The facts circulating even now worldwide concerning White House ineptitude coupled with similar readings about the DOD and State Dept. are open source for the world to see-- The current DC echelon (Congress or lack of it, included) can run from those facts but they can't hide-- The world knows we are not economically strong enough to finance this hysterical mis-adventure ourselves--US consumers haven't saved so much as a nickle over the course of the last two years and as a result foreign lenders have gained a much larger measure of influential power over our ability to act independently-- Veterans benefits and Veterans hospitals are being scissored and this isn't a defeat???-- Our culture is too weak, too decadent and too self-absorbed be attentive to world affairs or to fight for itself or its spoils-- While the lower class young men and women bleed out the primes of their lives defending the American exceptionalism and irresponsibility that allows middle and upper class kids to dis-engage from duty and struggle and self-defense through the hideous manufactured alienation of the likes of Ipods, ecstacy and heroin to name only a few-- Who wants to die for an IPOD of American Idol fantasy for Christ's sakes??-- Bread and circus has made us soft, indulgent and abjectly tuned-out if not autistically dis-connected-- Peril impending??...... Defeat???........ Call it.........??....... whatever!!--