HOW TO FAIL IN IRAQ

Actually, the White House has been extraordinarily innovative in this area, producing dozens of brilliant ideas since 2003 about achieving utter failure over there, and surprising us all, again and again, with new ways to fail just when it appears they've hit their creative limits.

Here are some of their latest hits.

From the AP via Yahoo courtesy of AlterNet:

U.S. may send 5,000 more troops to Baghdad

Defense experts inside and outside the Pentagon worry that diverting U.S. troops to Baghdad could weaken their ability in other parts of the country. And they say the plan reverses an earlier effort to make Americans less visible and put Iraqi forces out front in the fight.

And

As part of the plan, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Thursday extended the tours of some 3,500 members of the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. It was scheduled to be leaving now, but instead, most of its 3,900 troops will serve for up to four more months.

Click here for the rest.

As the article notes, the redeployments are due to the deteriorating situation in Baghdad, which is yet another sign that the insurgency continues to not be in its "last throes," that there most definitely is a civil war going on, and that the Iraqi army is nowhere near being ready to stabilize the country by itself. That means, according to the standards Bush himself has set for withdrawal, that US forces will continue to occupy Iraq for some years to come. We're still looking for that corner to turn.

Anyway, this troop move may help to stabilize Baghdad for the time being, or not, but, because we're essentially out of reserves, all this does is rob Peter to pay Paul. Insurgents and sectarian fighters will simply move their operations to places the troops have abandoned, launching suicide bombers at the capitol city from the outside until things cool off on the inside. Or not. Beefing up the US troop presence in Baghdad may have no effect on the escalating violence at all.

I thought we had learned in Vietnam that conventional warfare fares badly against guerilla fighters. Guess not.

And what's this shit about tacking four more months onto these soldiers' tours of duty? Hasn't anyone in the Pentagon been reading about the super high rates of depression and PTSD among the troops? About US servicemen freaking out and murdering families and raping their daughters? About the spike in domestic violence among troops home on leave? This is a bad idea. Our guys are wildly overworked and stressed out over there. Nothing good can come of this.

But wait. Here's an oldie, updated for the summer.

From USA Today courtesy of the Daily Kos:

Equipment shortfalls hurt Army readiness

Up to two-thirds of the Army's combat brigades are not ready for wartime missions, largely because they are hampered by equipment shortfalls, Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday, citing unclassified documents.

In a letter to President Bush, Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said that "nearly every non-deployed combat brigade in the active Army is reporting that they are not ready" for combat. The figures, he said, represent an unacceptable risk to the nation.

Click here for the rest.

This shit's been going on for a couple of years now. As soon as it was clear that we were facing a full blown insurgency, if I recall correctly, numerous stories about massive shortages of kevlar vests and armor plating for vehicles started hitting the headlines. The news seems to have died down since then, but the shortages, apparently, have only gotten worse. This is what comes from the sublime stupidity of starting a war while massively cutting taxes, which is probably the Sergeant Pepper or Abbey Road of Bush's Iraq failure discography, the greatest album of failure of all time.

Wait, scratch that. Invading on false pretenses gets the title for greatest all time failure in Iraq. You know, I opposed the invasion, and continue to oppose the disasterous occupation, but that doesn't mean that I want our soldiers out there unprotected. I mean, if they simply can't come home until Iraq has stabilized, then stabilize the damned country!!! Either get serious about winning the fucking war, or get the fuck out of there. Every day it continues is travesty.

I guess Bush thinks there are even greater failures that he has yet to achieve. Perhaps he's fashioning his magnum opus: a failure to end all failures, a.k.a. Armageddon.

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