On Thu, 08 Dec 2005 04:40:22 -0500, PagCal <pagcal@runbox.com> wrote:

George Bush and Iraq
The word is out

Leader
Thursday December 1, 2005
The Guardian

George Bush has learned enough to know that he cannot claim "mission
accomplished" in Iraq - as he so arrogantly did in May 2003, just as the
real war was beginning in earnest. Now, 2,100 American and scores of
thousands of Iraqi lives later, the "clear strategy for victory" he laid
out yesterday looks equally misjudged. The president's speech was
prompted by intensifying domestic criticism of his policy - his ratings
are down to a record low of 37% - and by the Iraqi elections on December
15. The US naval academy at Annapolis is a fitting setting for any
address on American power, and although there was plenty of familar and
tired sub-Churchillian rhetoric about the fight for freedom and the
terrorists' "war against humanity" this one failed to set out the exit
strategy it is widely agreed must be elaborated.

Still, there was no disguising the fact that Mr Bush wants out: the
centrepiece of his speech was a detailed report on the progress being
made by the Iraqi army and police to defeat the "rejectionists,
Saddamists and terrorists" and thus allow US forces to come home to the
applause of "a proud nation". Of 120 Iraqi battalions, 40 are taking the
lead in the fight - surprisingly impressive figures suggesting at the
very least that Washington may be lowering the bar for what constitutes
combat readiness. Scepticism is only natural after the false claims
about Saddam's WMD. But this progress has not prevented abuses of
members of the Sunni minority by Shia security forces, including torture
and executions that recall the worst crimes of the Baathist era and
augur badly for the country's "emerging democracy".

Mr Bush was talking to Americans rather than Iraqis, most of whom do not
share his upbeat prognosis. He repeatedly attacked "artificial
timetables," set by "politicians in Washington," pledging to stay put as
long as necessary while hinting at staged troop pullouts next year - as
the ever loyal Tony Blair has now cautiously started to do. Talk of
withdrawing from Iraqi cities sounded sensible enough, but there was no
broader recognition of how the fatally magnetic effect of the US
occupation is itself sustaining the insurgency and that ending it
depends on splitting off foreign jihadis from the Iraqi Sunni mainstream
by using negotiation, amnesties and building a more inclusive political
system. The commander-in-chief went back to emotional memories of 1945
to warn that this war will not end with a surrender ceremony on the deck
of a battleship. What is certainly true is that the "complete victory"
of which he spoke is a dangerous fantasy.