going.. going... gone!  Booman hits it right out of the park, over the green monster, and it's OUTTA HERE!!!

John Mccain Called his wife WHAT??

It may just turn out that the U.S. (let's dump the patriotic 'We', you know the one at the beginning of the Constitution because both U.S. political organizations have made it clear that it applies to them and not to us) will end up leaving Iraq involuntarily, no matter what the Establishment thinks or doesn't think. They've sunk their teeth into this mess and keep biting harder. But that doesn't mean that their teeth won't eventually fall out.

It has also been clear for quite a while that the U.S.'s strategy now is the search for a Saddam clone. That's what's behind the arming of Sunni warlords. Maybe the wish isn't for a Saddam clone who will be as nasty as his predecessor, but still one who can keep things quiet, while hopefully being somewhat accommodating to the Shia. And of course a Saddam clone wouldn't deserve the name if he didn't invade Iran.

The people running the U.S. now are infinitely stupid and even more than infinitely mean.

Good find, BooMan, the revival of 'the Establishment'. Many younger people are probably unfamiliar with the notion and will have to think twice what it means. Lots of older people will of course start foaming at the mouth about the dirty fucking hippies and Ronald Reagan will be resurrected by Newt Gringrich  in the first pan-wingnut miracle play.

but no Pol right now will say so. To do so will incur the full wrath and strong, powerful opposition of the Saudis and the military-industrial complex. They are still holding at least half the cards. Hillary is walking a tightrope. And Edwards, who tells the truth, is getting the full blast of MSM ridicule, prompted by their oil-mongering stockholders.

Why will we leave? Because we will be thrown out by the Shi'a. It's only a matter of time. The current sword-rattling against Iran is intended to slow down that tide.

Of course, there's the possibility that Cheney will actually be allowed to light the fire that destroys peace for generations. I'm not sure the Dem's even have the balls to stop that.

Michaela

The difference between Vietnam and Iraq:

Bush had a plan for getting out of Vietnam.

Pogo said: "We have met the enemy and he is us".

The pols are doing what the majority of the US public wants. That is to keep the prices low on raw materials and finished goods entering the US. The public doesn't want to have to deal with how this gets done, we just want to keep driving our SUV's.

When asked, the vast majority say we need a "strong military" and many think that we still aren't spending enough of this sector. In fact militarism amounts to about a half trillion per year. People don't want to acknowledge that they are being selfish so they are perfectly happy to buy into the popular fictions about bringing democracy to foreign states or preventing terrorism from entering the US. Self deception is a powerful protective mechanism and we are very good at it.

If the wars were going better you wouldn't be hearing any substantial dissent. Not only don't people want to pay for their consumerism they don't even want to have to pay in terms of the lost and damaged lives of our soldiers. We should just get what we want pain free.

There is little sign of this changing voluntarily. At some point the world or mother nature will push back hard enough that the US will be forced to scale back its consumption. Whether this will be a pleasant experience or not will depend upon how long we stay in denial of reality.

Policies not Politics
--- Daily Landscape

I came to the conclusion some time ago that defeat is the only answer, as it was the only answer to Germany's imperial venture.  This is going to be very tough on the troops, needless to say, and my heart goes out to them.  There will be no draft, which is the only way the United States can maintain a permanent presence in Iraq.  The American people won't stand for it, and this includes the party of Jenna and not-Jenna as well as the rest of us.

We are just going to have to watch this crap go down the toilet, along with everybody else.  The foreign policy elite can hoot and hollar all they want about strategic importance, but unless they can get the American people to support a draft so they can drive their SUV's at any speed they want, they won't get it.  And if they don't get it, our effort over there is doomed.


Knut

I am no longer sure that "we can do better."
How can we do better Boo? It is easy to see how bad the US has done butits the "how can we do better" that Ain't that easy to explain.

And in a real world Jimmy Carter would have had time to enact his alternative energy program before peak oil hit us and as a hedge on MidEast instability.

Did you see that now Bush is using our failure in Vietnam to justify our continued presence in Iraq?

Perhaps we should have stayed longer in Nam he's going to speculate.

I'm really getting 3$%^ing sick of refighting the battles of the sixties. You boys lost as did the McNamara Technocrats. Get over it.

Talk about a disconnect from reality.

 

pound it home to those miserable "cut-and-run" republicans...

   Freedom's Watch, a conservative group, plans to launch a $15 million advertising campaign in 20 states today. The group's spokesman, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, says the goal is to tell people that the buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq is working.

    "We want to get the message to both Democrats and Republicans: Don't cut and run, fully fund the troops, and victory is the only objective," Fleischer says.

it's perfectly logical... anyone and anything, republican or democrat, that might serve as an obstacle to gaining unfettered power and keeping staggering rivers of cash flowing will be a target... bushco has already proven beyond anybody's ability to dispute that it awards its support and loyalty conditionally, that is to say only on the basis of UNCONDITIONAL support and loyalty toward bushco... political party, religious affiliation, public standing, credibility, reputation - none of that will shield you from the wrath of bushco should you show one iota of deviation from that unconditionality...

visit my blog - http://www.takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/

Looking forward, this diary is all about Hillary Clinton and the DLC/AIPAC continuation of the Iraq War. Unless Gore gets involved, she is it for the next 8 years and we will still be in Iraq on her retirement. Pelosi did not get booed during her address at AIPAC for suggesting that the US must get out of Iraq for nothing. Hillary will not disappoint them. Democratizing the Middle East will also be her greatest foreign policy folly.

We have not been defeated if the primary goal is military/economic occupation.

The longer we are there, the more justified our presence becomes: hence the Friedman Units. The chaos itself demands that we stay on as occupiers at some significant level. Is abandonment really a policy without guaranteed blowback?

Remember the Pottery Barn Rule? 'You broke it you bought it' was not offered as a reason not to go, but rather to provide a method to justify staying on long term. We broke it, we've bought it. It's ours.

Is that defeat? As ugly and unpopular as it is, we've acquired our 51st (52nd?) state. This is what Bush figures he'll be remember for.


Declaring the bottom is the only way back up..

I actually understand the calculus behind further weaponizing Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Israel and others in the region. BushCo has created such a catastrophe in the region that this sort of bribery is almost necessary for the time being because it's cheaper than having to wage overt war against the Saudis now, something the Neocons couldn't pull off now regardless of their enthusiasm for it (eventually). Paying them off buys a bit of time to monkey with other geopolitical forces. Yet our problem here in the US is that we have no leaders from any party to follow through with measures that will pro-actively begin to repair the damage done by the Bush/Cheney juggernaut, and restore any sort of balance of power in the Middle East or the greater world at large.

And in the end, it is lunacy, and as long as our own government is run by crazies like Cheney & Co or equivocators from both parties who sanction the overarching myth that we have a right to be in the MidEast preemptively attacking soverign nations and telling them what to do. No matter how clever the tactics might be to keep the whole charade going, it will collapse in chaos and tragedy under the weight of it's own false premises.

This weaponized strain of "American Exceptionalism", this sort of aggressive hubris and contempt for others that lies at the heart of the neocon agenda, simply cannot yield positive results because it is fatally flawed from the getgo. For "America to succeed" with such an agenda, America would have to forsake it's own (already seriously crippled) democracy, and even then the successes would last only as long as the half-life of the typical sound-byte, sort of like a "We have achieved victory over China" proclamation followed an hour later by the total collapse of the global economy and our selfish way of life with it.

So, I would see the promised money to Saudi, et. al. as a good thing if we had leaders of our own who might reasonably follow through on making the most of such bribery to restore a semblance of balance in the region. But, we have no one from either party who displays even a glimmer of such awareness, and it's not clear that the US even has the capacity to effect such dealings any longer, so deeply has the Bush regime weakened and disgraced the US itself.

Denial is our most dangerous adversary.