LIEBERMAN, CLAIMING IRAQ WAR IS "WINNABLE," SEEKS TO GIVE BUSH AND McCAIN COVER TO ESCALATE IT

Did you ever get the feeling that we were over the top in our jihad against Holy Joe Lieberman? Act Blue collected $453,000 for Ned Lamont's campaign, most of it for his victorious primary battle against Lieberman. Of that $77,000 came through Blue America (the community formed by Firedoglake, Crooks & Liars and DownWithTyranny). Between us we published hundreds of pieces on the perfidy of Lieberman, seeking to warn Connecticut voters about the inherent dangers that went with re-electing Holy Joe. Democrats got the message loud and clear and rejected him. Republicans embraced him and he's in the Senate again.

Today Lieberman has penned a disgraceful editorial of distortions and right wing propaganda in the Washington Post. He seeks to articulate the discredited McCain plan for giving Bush the cover to escalate the disastrous Iraq occupation and to ignore the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. Lieberman starts his propaganda screed by stating he's just spent 10 days in the Middle east meeting with leaders. He the demonstrates how he learned nothing at all-- not from the 10 days in was there, not from the 4 years we've been fighting in Iraq. His analysis is unrelated to objective reality. The man is clearly unfit for the Senate.


Like Bush and McCain, he is completely confused by the politics of the Middle East and unable to cope with the complexities. He decries the dangers from Iran but seems utterly incapable of realizing that his and Bush's policy has been to act as the cat's paw for Iran's goals. It was so when Bush first stumbled into the region and it so is now, as Bush backs the Shi'a against the Sunni in the civil war that is raging there, a civil war, predictably ostrich-like, Lieberman only mentions as something that could happen if his and McCain's bellicose plans are rejected. (The other main beneficiaries of the Bush-Lieberman policies in Iraq-- not counting their campaign contributors-- have been Al Qaeda.)

The two main points in Lieberman's piece are escalate now-- although it is an ill-defined escalation of more-of-the-same, stay-the-course, pointless and bloody mayhem-- and get ready to attack Iran. "On one side," he babbles idiotically, "are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States." They want it so, so they see it so. They are incapable of leading our nation-- Lieberman, McCain, Bush, Cheney, Rice... utterly unable to take off the ideological blinders and look at reality and deal with it. Lieberman is still trying to tie 9-11 to Iraq. Lieberman is still claiming the big problem is the lack of security in Baghdad. Is he insane? Venal? A little of both? A lot of both?

To turn around the crisis we need to send more American troops while we also train more Iraqi troops and strengthen the moderate political forces in the national government. After speaking with our military commanders and soldiers there, I strongly believe that additional U.S.
troops must be deployed to Baghdad and Anbar province -- an increase that will at last allow us to establish security throughout the Iraqi capital, hold critical central neighborhoods in the city, clamp down on the insurgency and defeat al-Qaeda in that province.
In Baghdad and Ramadi, I found that it was the American colonels, even more than the generals, who were asking for more troops.

"Even more than the generals?" The generals know it is pointless. Colonels are thinking about battlefield tactics, not strategies for winning wars. The generals have been clear that they think escalation or-- as McCain and other right wing propagandists call it-- "surge," is a losing strategy. Bush, McCain and Lieberman refuse the listen; refuse to hear. "In nearly four years of war, there have never been sufficient troops dispatched to accomplish our vital mission. The troop surge should be militarily meaningful in size, with a clearly defined mission." And why was that, Mr. Lieberman? Was it because you and Bush and Rumsfeld and the rest of your war party fired military officers-- even General Shinseki-- who said we needed more-- many more-- troops to have even a chance to win in Iraq? Now it's past too late. Why should anyone care what people like Lieberman and Bush-- who have made every wrong decision from day one and have caused the catastrophe that is Iraq-- have to say now. They are proven losers and should be consigned to the scrap heap of history-- the sooner the better.