Washington File

"Are we turning the corner in Iraq?"

We?

Quit saying "The U.S. Invasion". This is George Bush's Invasion. ALL of this war lies at his feet. The last U.S. election was a complete turnover of power to the Democratic Party. But without some Republican support, nothing gets past a filibuster. And even if a law gets passed, there is nowhere near enough support to override a Bush veto.

Ironic that the U.S. brags about Democracy when a single 'man' can override the will of 73% of the people. Nothing can be done until January 20, 2009 when the Bush regime is over. Big party at my house!!!

After almost 5 years of slaughter:

"the most astounding polling figure of recent weeks. A New York Times poll asked, "Who do you trust the most with successfully resolving the war in Iraq?" In response, only 5% of those polled gave the nod to the Bush administration, just 21% to Congress, but fully 68% -- more than two out of three -- plunked for "the military."

There is no hope for the USA.

And there is no hope for the world to live in peace.

Dear Canadians,

Please invade us and bring it all to an end, we apparently cannot.

Thanks,

America

Yes the world is safer but France is now warning of war against Iran if they get a Nuclear Bomb.
Iran has a handful of unelected senators or Khomanies that control all of ther resources they are billionaires and so are there relatives. They will subject their country to war to retain the resource money instead of spreading the wealth around, how many Iranian will die to protect a dozen greedy men.

Sure they'll remove troops and replace them with Pro's not from the Army, Navy, AirForce, or Marines but the fifth arm of USA's arsenal, the secret mercenary company Blackwater whose highly trained guns for hire number in the 25,000 range. Iraq's new money market is in the security business. That's why Paul Bremer is there he can make a bad situation profitable

Morality generally, (a la evil dictators and such), freedom, democracy and so on have never had anything at all to do with the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Neither did the supposed "imminent threat" shouted about by politicians and diplomats, the mystery WMDs that never appeared, or the complete fabrication that Al Qaeda was hiding out there bear any weight in the pre-war calculations of the Washington hawks. It is also quite ridiculous to assume that an administration willing to start a war which has claimed the lives of over 3,000 American soldiers so far cares at all about the health of the Iraqi population.

The Iraq war is a product of a grab at economic and political power by the United States with an eye to their possible slide in the global pecking order and nothing more. Anyone who believes otherwise has been effectively duped. While troop reductions are inevitable at some point, it is extremely unlikely that America would be willing to truly pull out its forces until the gains of the invasion outweigh the costs measured back in the war rooms of DC. The only thing that could possible change this fact would be a situation where continued costs mounted into an equation where no positive balance was deemed to be achievable.

Barring this sort of event occurring American troops will remain a significant presence in Iraq for many years at the very least in order to prop up a “friendly” regime, support economic investments and to retain a strategic piece of geography in relation to other governments in the region. No country on Earth is willing to drop hundreds of thousands of soldiers along with billions of dollars into a war unless there are prizes to be had and we will not see a willing pull out until said prizes are in the bag.

They may talk about reductions but in the final analysis until the oil is entirely transfered legally by the Iraq govt. to the American companies American troops will remain
there whether they have to kill 2 million more Iraqis to do it.
Iraq will never again sell oil in anything but USA

You nailed it.The losers in this war were everyone.There are no winners.A country in ruins, an economy decimated, 1000s dead and unstable region in the world.And we call this progress! When is the US going to realize that they are not the moral authority of the world?They may be militarily powerful but they have lost respect everywhere in the world with their outrageous conduct.If you don't buy in to their rhetoric then you are against them and their enemy.Maybe the U.S. should be taking a hard look at itself.They might just realize that they are their own worst enemy.

Being what feels like ancient and remembering the hoopla in the aftermath of Nuremberg I wonder if history would want to try Bush and cronies as war criminals, for if not invading Iraq, for causing massive chaos in that country afterwords, should be an object lesson for the next twit that say's Oh we'll just go in there and shape them up.
Bill.

This Administration, as usual, had twisted the reality of the defeat in the war in front of its citizens. The American media was helping to do so! But, how long this administration can afford to finance this war? Does the American economy in this very bad shape could do so? I don’t think.
No body talks now about victory! This G. W. Bush is trying to forward the declaration of the defeat to the next elected president!
When this administration built the biggest embassy in Baghdad without taking permission from any Iraqi authority; they were expecting to control the whole Middle East. They did not expect the diminishing of their power in the region!

There always has been an inner USA policy on Iraq. They are now finishing what will be their largest Embassey anywhere, and its published design indicates an intent to have a huge staff for a very long time. They have already been having USA firms sign deals for the southern oil fields, the Kurds in the north are doing so independently. This already treats it as a dismembered state with a long term USA controlling presense. Permanent USA military control.

And the press was where? Do they have coffee and donut shops in Washington?

Look, Congress may not raise objections but there is no reason for the press to not challenge anything this administration says, and to do so with vigor and vigilence.

So the leading Washington papers again went to sleep, along with the rest of the media. They accepted rhetoric, forgot to do the math and patted everyone on the back for a job well done?

The Fourth Estate in the US is now about three and a half. Until they wake up and start acting responsibly there will be no change.

This administration has successfully set the tenor for the next one. It is up to the media to change that.

The tepid response to this column by a few resigned readers I think reflects the problem Democrats and other antiwar groups have confronting this president on this issue. They cannot be seen as defeatists and if elected they do not want to preside over defeat. So it will not be a replay of the Viet Nam war. There will be no riots because except for Move-on.org types there is, even in a liberal town like Seattle, no public outrage. PS Those who never tire of saying Iraq never should have been invaded in the first place, remember you cannot unring a bell.

You may want to check your fly Henry.. your bias is showing.

Success was never an option in Iraq. The instant the US invaded, they started the process that will ultimately hand Iraq over to Iran, utterly destroying the one and only check that America had on Iran's ambitions. Bush, in his arrogance, upset a very delicate balancing job over a pit of fire, and future generations will be paying for it for a very long time. Nothing else he could have done could have made it more dangerous for the existence of Israel in the Middle East.
Bush got what he wanted; he'll go down in history, in infamy. He doesn't care about anything else but his own ego.

Public outrage you say? I wonder.

In the 1960s we had militant feminism, the civil rights movement, experimantal drugs, a burgeoning music scene and the counter culture to feed the anti war / anti establishment cause. Conditions were ripe for violent protest and the attempt to reshape society: socialism was still seen as a vibrant and creditable alternative to capitalism, revolution was in the air practically everywhere one looked and the atmosphere was more than conducive to protest. Universities lead the way of course, the intellectual liberalism of the university campus was a natural fit for the anti establishment crowd.

Such conditions aren't at work today, there isn't enough support for the anti war movement to broaden its appeal to the bourgeoisie and one has to wonder where the university students are in all of this. Without their weight and credibilty thrown behind it the anti war movement will only ever limp along as a fringe element of society. Of course, without the draft much of the immediacy of the war and self interest of the student body has been defused. There's nothing like having to evade the draft and face possible jail time to focus the imagination! We can now afford the luxury of not having to save our own skins when the poor (and there are lots of THEM) can fight the war on our behalf -see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 for more on that.

We still see anti-globalization and APEC protests to be sure but they're usually small incidents and easily dismissed as largely irrelevant. Until that changes there will be no cohesive opposition to the war in Iraq.

Does anyone seriously think these war-mongering goons are ever going to leave Iraq? Or any of the 130 countries in which they maintain a military presence? War is what they live for; get used to it.
They will be in the ME as long as Blackwater can supply the necessary cannon fodder; nobody keeps score on the number of mercenaries being used. There will be some regular force drawdowns, instantly replaced by more USAF airpower. The "insurgents" don't have any anti-aircraft weapons, except when some brain dead media hack tells us that RPGs are being used as such. Kind of like using spitballs against invaders from outer space. This will keep the body count acceptable to Mr. and Mrs. America, who think Iraq is somewhere near Venezuela.
I was 21 when the Marines hit the beach at Da Nang. This bullshit is old news.

When it comes to smoke and mirrors,this administration beats any illusionist. Those of us who follow the news, regularly, recall the statements in June of this year stipulating that 20-30,000 troops would be re-deployed in the spring of 2008. In short, troop levels would drop to pre-"surge" levels.Most will applaud the president for listening to "the people" and the Democrats and anti-war activists will pat themselves on the back.In fact,the president is getting it his way.again.

The war in Iraq was never a good idea in the first place, but success was possible. However, that hope was quickly dashed when the Bush administration started making political mistake, after political mistake in running Iraq. Combined, the refusal to allow Iraqi soldiers to help the American army, and the initial deBaathification program were probably the beginning of what has turned out to be a very, very long end.

Everything since then has been "smoke-and-mirrors", attempting to prove to the American public that the US is winning the war it has already lost.

This is all typical of the Bush administration. If the rhetoric isn't working, change the rhetoric. Don't change the situation, merely the way the situation is spoke of.

You would think that by now the American public would have clued-in to the maniputation of this administration. The shift in the vote at the mid-term elections was positive, but then the Democrats turned out to be full of just as much baloney as the goverment.

Unfortunately, Henry is right. Until the public openly and loudly shows it's discontent with the situation in Iraq, nothing will change except the wording.

The only problem is that Bush has created such a mess in Iraq that it might now be impossible for anybody, even the Iraqis themselves, to clean it up.

It's a lose-lose situation.

I agree wholeheartedly with bo fodchuk's comment. As to Neil McDonald's reference to the Bush administration's increasing preference for the term "global struggle against extremism", wouldn't that mean the USA is now promoting a "jihad" of its own?

The thing of it is that while both Petraeus and Crocker were credible, the previous statements by the Bush administration served to cast a pall on the whole Iraq adventure. Many of us out here remember Rumsfeld and "dead-enders" and Iraqi oil paying for the whole thing. Unfortunately it has taken 4 years for reality rather than ideology to guide strategy and attempts at diplomacy. I see an American military presence in Iraq that lasts at least as long as they had large bases in Germany. Even if the Democrats win the presidency, there will be no precipitous withdrawal, and they made a huge mistake to promise one. It used to be called realpolitik and I just wish politicians would quit spinning and try being honest for a change.

Thanks Henry, the Bush administration cannot be held to account on any measures. If things go wrong they just change the measures. If Congress was hoping with the Petraeus report to see light at the end of the tunnel Bush just added more tunnel.

Dust off the protest signs from forty years ago. Here we come.

Bush and his general Petraeus are all smoke and mirrors, Make the public believe they are withdrawing troops, but later claim it cannot be done. The Democrats don't have the guts to stand up to the Republicans and demand a withdrawal of troops with the election so close at hand. If the Democrats did pass a bill requiring troop withdrawal Bush would simply veto it anyway.

Maybe it is time the US legislators look at redefining the use of the veto power by the president so that if a rouge president is elected Congress and the Senate might have some "real" power to reign him/her in and apply some brakes on an "out of control" president.

Public outrage? Henry are you advocating "Peace Riots"?

This report and Neil McDonald's are bang on.