"Iraq: We're Cooked." That's what Maureen Dowd is calling the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which concludes - in Dowd's words - that "Iraq has zoomed past civil war to hell." Dowd summarizes the findings:
If the violence gets worse, the report concludes, three sulfurous possibilities loom: chaos leading to partition, the emergence of a Shiite strongman or anarchy "mixing extreme ethnosectarian violence with debilitating intragroup clashes."So after four years of war, we get to choose between chaos, another Saddam or anarchy. Good work, W. And at such bargain prices; the administration is breaking the record for the military budget, asking for $100 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan this year and $145 billion more for 2008.
Quite an accomplishment for the Bush Administration and its enablers in Congress. Unfortunately, it appears that we're screwed whether we stay in Iraq OR pull out. According to Dowd:
It's official. We're in a cycle of violence so complex and awful that withdrawing American troops will make it worse and keeping American troops there may also make it worse.We can try or we can leave, but either way, it seems, we're cooked.
"Either way, we're cooked." Sadly, that's the story of the Bush Administration's idiocy not just on Iraq, but also on global warming, energy policy, the budget deficit, and pretty much everything else it's touched the past 6 years.
Speaking of idiocy, the braindead Bush Administration comments du jour come from Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, reacting to the dire UN Climate Panel report on global warming. According to Bodman, in his far-less-than-infinite wisdom, "warned against 'unintended consequences' - including job losses - that he said might result if the government requires economy-wide caps on carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels."
Uh, earth to Bodman: how about the "unintended consequences" that "future tropical hurricanes and typhoons will become more intense," that "Arctic sea ice will disappear "almost entirely" by the end of the century," that polar bears and many other species will become extinct, and that we'll turn our planet into a living hell? What would all THAT do to our precious economy, oh wise one?
As Maureen Dowd said, with "leaders" like this, "we're cooked." Heckuva job.
There is the real daisy chain of responsibility for our godawful situation: Corporate megarich to Supreme Court to Bush to Voters to Congress and back to Bush. Hmmm. Really, it can be considered an abject failure of checks and balance in a system designed to withstand the vagaries inherent in a self-sustaining system of self-government.
We need to get a email campaign going wherein each of us and all the co-patriots we can muster CONTACTS EACH SENAOR OF BOTH PARTIES (or at least the members of the appropriate committees) and OUR REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS AND THE MEMBERS OF THE APPROPRIATE COMMITTEES TO DEMAND THAT THE ONLY FUNDING THAT WILL BE APPROVED IS THAT WHICH BRINGS OUR TROOPS HOME.
Bush et al broke Iraq and through their hardheaded self-righteous unwillingness to refuse to negotiate with the stakeholders in the region--and, yes, I include Iran and Syria--are turning their backs on the only way anyone can fix what Bush et all broke.
In the meantime we need to reframe this whole "support the troops" campaign to demonstrate that the Bush definition means sending service menbers to a misbegotten, pre-emptive, totally unjust war, (2) sending them initially without appropriate body armor or sufficiently armored vehicles, (3) cutting funding that would take care of the returning veterans, (4) now insists on "surging" but requiring the "surgin" troops to "make due" with the equipment already in place, (5) asking service members to redeploy multiple times--I think you have the idea.
How would we like to define "support the troops"?
And who could we get to put this new definition out there in print (E. J. Dione? Others?) and online--
We need to get this new definition out there before any talk of refusing Bush's request for more $$$$, other than that to bring our service members home--we have to be ready to take on the hysterical right--
Let's get this moving, OK?
Ruth Fischer
I'm just glad my nephew is back from Iraq for now.