IRAQ: THE VIETNAM OF OUR ERA

From the New York Times via the Houston Chronicle:

CIA memo paints bleak picture of Iraq's future

But overall, the officials described the station chief's cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq. They said it warned that the security situation was likely to get worse, bringing more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon in the ability of the Iraqi government to assert authority and build the economy.

Together, the appraisals, which follow several other such warnings from officials in Washington and in the field, were much more pessimistic than the public picture being offered by the Bush administration before the elections scheduled for Iraq next month, the officials said. The cable was sent to CIA headquarters after U.S. forces completed what military commanders have described as a significant victory, with the retaking of Fallujah, a principal base of the Iraqi insurgency, in mid-November.

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And weighing in on all the insanity is former Reagan administration official, Wall Street Journal and National Review editor, and all around hardcore conservative, Paul Craig Roberts. From CounterPunch courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:

Is the Bush Administration Certifiable?

We are getting out butts kicked in Iraq, and Bush wants to invade more countries? It is clear as day that we do not have enough troops to deal with Iraq. The 12,000 additional troops "to improve security" are being acquired by extending the combat tours of troops already on duty in Iraq. More US soldiers were killed in Iraq in November than in any previous month. The US is so hard up for troops that the Pentagon is deploying soldiers who have lost arms and legs in combat. On December 1 the Washington Post reported: "US armed forces have recently announced new efforts to keep seriously wounded or disabled soldiers on active duty."

Redeploying the disabled is presented as a heroic demonstration of our gung-ho warriors' fighting spirit. But what it really means is we have no more troops to throw at the few thousand lightly armed Iraqi insurgents who have tied down eight US divisions.

According to the US military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, the hospital has treated 20,802 US troops for injuries received in Iraq. According to the Pentagon's figures, 54% of the wounded are too seriously injured to return to their units. If that figure is correct, it would mean that the insurgents have put 11,233 US troops out of action. Add in the 1,254 US troops who have been killed for a total of 12,487. That's 9% of our total force in Iraq and a much higher percentage of our combat force.

There is no indication that we have put 12,487 Iraqi insurgents out of action. Indeed, until very recently the US military estimated that there were only several thousand active insurgents in all of Iraq.

Someone needs to tell Bush that terrorists are stateless and that invading states creates insurgencies. In Iraq our soldiers are not fighting terrorists. They are fighting an insurgency that Bush created by invading Iraq.

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I really don't think that anyone now can seriously refute the Vietnam comparison. US forces invaded Iraq on the phoniest of pretexts, just as Vietnam was precipitated by the phony Gulf of Tonkin incident. The South Vietnamese government was a US sponsored sham, run by murderers and criminals, just as the new US sponsored Iraqi government is a sham, run by murderers and criminals. US forces in Iraq seem to be fighting an insurgency manned by what appears to be an endless supply of warriors ready to die for their cause, just as in Vietnam. Even though the death toll among Americans in Iraq is lower than it was in Vietnam (due to modern body armor, no doubt), the casualty rate is extraordinarily high. American citizens blindly accept the US government's steady stream of lies about Iraq, just as they did during the Vietnam war.

This list of comparisons goes on and on. In my entire life, I never thought our country would ever again be so stupid, but here we are. This shit makes me sick.

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