The War Is Lost
By Paul Craig Roberts
9-4-6
The Pentagon's latest quarterly "progress" report to Congress on Iraq
is a grim tale of a lost war. The Pentagon told Congress what Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and propaganda organs such as Fox "News" never tell
the American public, namely:
(1) The Sunni-based insurgency remains "potent and viable" despite
spiraling Sunni-Shiite violence and beefed up US forces.
(2) Since the last report three months ago, Iraqi casualties from
"sectarian clashes"--the Pentagon's euphemism for civil war--have
soared by more than 50 percent.
(3) >From May when the new Iraqi government was established until
August, the average number of weekly attacks increased sharply to 800.
(4) Since the previous report, Iraqi daily casualties have jumped by
50 per cent from 80 per day to 120 per day. Currently, Iraqis are
dying at the rate of 43,800 per year from violence.
The Iraqi government cowers behind the fortified walls of the "Green
Zone." On August 31, the Kurds in the north took down the Iraqi flag
and replaced it with the Kurdish one. Most of Iraq is ruled by Shiite
and Sunni militias. Conflict between them has forced 160,000 Iraqis to
flee their homes.
Who is going to tell Bush that the war is lost?
Is Rumsfeld going to tell him?
Is Cheney going to tell him?
How can they tell him after all the bravado and false reports?
This is a delusional administration. Confronted with three major polls
showing that two-thirds of Americans oppose the Iraq war, Bush
declared that he is staying the course, demonstrating yet again his
disdain for common sense and the will of the American people.
If Bush and his neoconservative cabal were judged by their performance
they would be ridden out of town on a rail. If a court of law judged
their actions, they would walk the plank.
Everything this moronic regime promised about a "cakewalk" war and the
ease of pacifying Iraq and turning it into an American puppet
democracy has turned to ashes in President Bush's mouth.
Having lost the Iraq war, the neoconservatives are determined to
initiate war with Iran.
National security expert John Prados says, "The pattern of
manipulation and misuse of intelligence that served the Bush
administration in the drive to start a war with Iraq is being repeated
today for its neighbor Iran."
It is now established beyond a reasonable doubt that the neocons
intentionally cooked up false intelligence in order to justify the
invasion of Iraq, an invasion that has resulted in tens of thousands
of Iraqi and American casualties, both dead and maimed.
Aggressive wars are themselves war crimes. To intentionally create a
false basis for an aggressive war is an act of high treason.
Alarmed by the neoconservative drive to start a war with Iran before
the US can extricate itself from the Iraq catastrophe, the CIA firmly
declared that any Iranian nuclear weapon is a decade away. This
undermines the neoconservatives' urgency to attack Iran now.
Neoconservative fanatics tried to discredit the CIA with a recent
report by the House Intelligence Committee Republican staff written by
neoconservative Frederick Fleitz, a protege of neocon heavyweight John
Bolton, a person active in concocting the false case for war against
Iraq. Fleitz alleges that the CIA is a know-nothing agency that lacks
the ability to assess Iran's ability to make nuclear weapons.
Neocons also dismiss the findings of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, which issued a report on August 31 reaffirming that there is
no tangible proof that Iran's nuclear energy program has a military
aspect.
The neoconservatives plan to plunge America into war with Iran before
they can be held accountable for the lost war in Iraq.
This neoconservative conspiracy against the United States and Iran
must be stopped. Neocons must be removed from the government that they
have betrayed and held accountable for their crimes.
Before America can preach democracy to the world, we must first rescue
American democracy from the Bush regime and re-establish government
accountability to the people.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He
is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
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