Idiocy in Iraq

Ever since I began publishing this blog more than two years ago, I have bitterly criticized the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq and the dreadful consequences of the occupation. I feel no satisfaction that my warnings have been vindicated.

My frustration and anger at the death and maiming of so many young Americans, and the waste of billions of dollars that could have been spent for far more vital purposes--think Katrina--knows no bounds.

The President continues to make his idiotic argument that we must remain in Iraq until "victory is achieved." He has yet to define what "victory" would mean there. How can anyone offer a definition when examining the varied forces involved in what is essentially a civil war?

Sunnis are fighting Shiites, some Sunni factions are fighting other Sunni factions, some Shiite factions are fighting other Shiite factions, and insurgents of all stripes are battling the U.S. And so the widespread violence and insecurity that cripples Iraq.

The President has the audacity to still charge that Al-Qaeda is "the main enemy" in Iraq. U.S. military and intelligence officials, however, say that the organization known as Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia constitutes only a small part of the threat to U.S. troops. Its members are essentially free-lance local jihadis and foreign Islamic terrorists eager to kill Americans. They are inspired, but not necessarily directed, by the original Osama bin-Laden-led organization based in Afghanistan and the ungovernable tribal region in northwestern Pakistan.

"The only way [the Bush Administration] thinks they can rally people is by blaming Al-Qaeda," Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center, has charged. He is one of the growing number of high-level U.S. military and intelligence officials who, after resigning or retiring from government service, have criticized the Iraq invasion and the subsequent occupation. Their opinions were evidently ignored while they were still on the Federal payroll.

To support his claim that, despite the continuing violence, Iraq will become a stable democratic state, Bush makes the absurd claim that, after all, Israel is a "functioning democracy" that has not been destroyed by terrorism. The analogy underscores Bush's ignorance of Middle East history.

The silly season continues to thrive as Bush Administration supporters still complain that the news coverage of Iraq is distorted by the emphasis on violence and the disregard of "good news." Fox Cable Network's star pundit, Bill O'Reilly (ruler of the "no spin zone"), for example, seems to think that it's more important to report about the likes of Anne Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton than about bombings in Tikrit.