As support among Americans to begin some type of withdraw from Iraq continues to build, it is hard to understand just how Bush, his loyalists and his enablers can so willfully ignore the situation and the mounting anger and frustruation of the American people. Americablog reported Friday that a bipartisan group of senators is attempting to do Bush's bidding, trying to keep us in Iraq for, oh say, the next 100 years or so and introducing their legislation as an attempt to get us out of Iraq:
A bipartisan group of Senators has prepared legislation that they want to offer in the next few weeks that would keep US troops in Iraq indefinitely. What's worse, they're claiming that the legislation implements the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Studgy Group, when in fact, the legislation codifies George Bush's current failed policies in Iraq....
Specifically, the legislation buries a little nugget on page 18 of the bill. In a section entitled "Sense of Congress on Redeployment of United States Forces from Iraq," the legislation spells out the following preconditions to withdrawing US troops:
1. A massive list of suggested policies need to first be accomplished before the US withdraws. These include transferring the Iraqi National Police to the Ministry of Defense, reorganizing the Iraqi security forces, upgrading Iraq's police communications equipment, establishing courts, training judges, prosecutors and investigators, drafting oil legislation, implementing metering at the oil pipelines, reorganizing the entire Iraqi oil industry, and more. But that's not all that has to happen before our troops are permitted to withdraw from Iraq. Oh no. Read on.
2. Additional Iraqi brigades need to deployed. Meaning, the exact same policy we have now under George Bush. No withdraw until the Iraqi security forces are up to par. And our military people on the ground in Iraq say this could take 40 to 50 years, if ever.
3. The eventual withdrawal of US forces is "subject to unexpected development in the security situation on the ground." Meaning, if things don't get better, we don't leave. That's the current policy. And things aren't getting better.
At least they are trying to mislead the American public that this is some kind of plan for withdrawal when it clearly is an attempt to get congress to pass a law requiring troops to stay in Iraq indefinitely. And meanwhile, the situation in Iraq is worsening by the day, as evident in just these few stories reported in the last week, and the American people know it.
First,Wired blog reported on the projected cost of the war and it is astounding:
Additional war costs for the next 10 years could total about $472 billion if troop levels fall to 30,000 by 2010, or $919 billion if troop levels fall to 70,000 by about 2013. If these estimates are added to already appropriated amounts, total funding about $980 billion to $1.4 trillion by 2017.
Costs for the war have been spiralling out of control. The Bush Administration has been handing out no-bid cotracts to private companies and compaines with close ties to the Bush Administration have been raking in billions. This is all old news, of course. But this is the kind of thing we get for that money:
Thursday the Washington Post reported:
U.S. diplomats in Iraq, increasingly fearful over their personal safety after recent mortar attacks inside the Green Zone, are pointing to new delays and mistakes in the U.S. Embassy construction project in Baghdad as signs that their vulnerability could grow in the months ahead.
A toughly worded cable sent from the embassy to State Department headquarters on May 29 highlights a cascade of building and safety blunders in a new facility to house the security guards protecting the embassy. The guards' base, which remains unopened today, is just a small part of a $592 million project to build the largest U.S. embassy in the world....
The first signs of trouble, according to the cable, emerged when the kitchen staff tried to cook the inaugural meal in the new guard base on May 15....
But according to the cable, the electrical meltdown was just the first problem in a series of construction mistakes that soon left the base uninhabitable, including wiring problems, fuel leaks and noxious fumes in the sleeping trailers....
Such challenges with construction contracts inside the fortified enclave known as the Green Zone reflect the broader problems that have thwarted reconstruction efforts throughout war-torn Iraq.
This is FEMA in Iraq. As the Bush Administration's love affair with privitization continues to sour (for all but Bush anyway and his fellow free market idealogues), The Iraqi government, according to recent reports, is in terrible shape and may be falling apart as we speak.
Also reported Thursday in the Washington Post, sectarian strife continues unabated and greater numbers of people are being killed:
During the month of June, 453 unidentified corpses, some bound, blindfolded, and bearing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad, according to morgue data provided by a Health Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
In January, 321 corpses were discovered in the capital, a total that fell steadily until April but then rose sharply over the last two months, the statistics show.
Overall, the level of violent civilian deaths in Iraq is declining, according to the U.S. military and Health Ministry statistics, and there has been a steady drop in fatalities from mass-casualty bombings that have torn through outdoor markets, university bus stops and crowds assembled to collect food rations.
But the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets is considered a key indicator of the malignancy of sectarian strife. While the declining number of bombing victims suggests that efforts to control violence are showing some success, the daily slayings of individuals, in aggregate, speak to an enduring level of aggression.
"That's the cancer that keeps eating the neighborhoods," Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said at a meeting with reporters Saturday. "It never stops. It's a tit for tat. It's a cycle of violence that has to be broken."
To make matters worse for Bush he continues to lose support from key allies in his own party:
New Mexico's Republican Senator, Pete Domenici, publicly broke with George Bush over Iraq today. He wants a new strategy immediately. Like Dick Lugar who broke with Bush last week, Domenici is one of the Republican old-timers.
Americablog also reported Thursday that General Odom, former Director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Regan, recently wrote an essay in which he argued that we needed to start withdrawing troops from Iraq. Americablog points out that "this guy's credentials are beyond stellar."
Bush reminded us this Independence Day, yet again, that we cannot leave Iraq becuase he just doesn't want us to. I think it was Colin Powell that warned Bush that if we invaded Iraq we would own it. He was right. We are occupying that country unless things change really soon. Bush is going to leave office in 2008 and leave it to the next guy, hopefully a Democrat, to clean up his mess. And when Bush hands over his mess, he and his cronies will walk away being richer than ever and the American people and our troops will be left paying for this war in ways we can scarcely imagine even as we contemplate the horrors already apparent from this occupation and the projected $1.4 trillion price tag. Not to mention the cost in lives lost, lives shattered, and the psychological toll that this war will have on the troops who are lucky enough to come home.
And one more update, this is what we get despite all that money that has been given to contractors:
At least 20 mortar rounds and Katyusha rockets struck the fortified Green Zone on Tuesday afternoon, killing an American service member and two other people in an attack on the heart of U.S. and Iraqi government facilities in the capital.Those killed included an Iraqi and a person whose nationality was unknown, according to a statement released by the U.S. Embassy. About 18 people were injured, including two U.S. military personnel and three American contract employees, the statement said.
The Democrats need to stop caving to Bush and find a way to get us out. And Bush and Cheney need to be impeached.
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