MASS MEDIA GETS THE COUNTRY READY FOR BUSH'S ANNOUNCEMENT: THE McCAIN DOCTRINE-- ESCALATION

Although the Bobbsy Twins of the Middle East Apocolypse, Holy Joe Lieberman and John McCain-- with a little help from deep in the closet (Lindsey Lohan Graham)-- have been launching serial trial balloons for Bush's impending rejection of the Iraq Study Group's proposals, the mass media is doing the heavy lifting when it comes to softening up the public for The Announcement. According to NBC, Bush will announce in the next few days that he's sending 20,000 more troops into Iraq. "The plan is being called surge and accelerate: take control over violence in Baghdad, then speed up the handover of territory to Iraqi forces. The plan would also turn over more money to Iraq for reconstruction and a jobs program."

All the media leaks seem to be building more opposition than support, in both parties. (Outside the Beltway, opposition is fierce and is likely to get very loud.) Former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb thinks the McCain Doctrine is all wet. "If you send another 20,000 more troops, casualties are going to go up, you're going to increase the Iraqi's dependence on us." Republicans up for tough re-election races in 2008-- like Susan Collins (ME), Norm Coleman (MN) and perennial Democratic punching bag Heather Wilson (NM)-- have already attacked the entire premise of escalation and "surge."

Meanwhile neoCon windbag, one of the preeminent voices behind the web of lies that eased the way down the slope of war in Iraq, John Podhoretz, has taken it on himself to explain why Bush is firing General Casey. Podhoretz, who is part of the Cheney circle, claims Bush "has lost confidence in the strategy and tactics designed and implemented by the generals running the war. They have, as the Times put it, 'become more fixated on withdrawal than victory.' The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James T. Conway, told the Times that the president went to the Pentagon a few weeks ago and said flatly, 'What I want to hear from you is how we're going to win, not how we're going to leave.' And that's basically why, according to the Times, 'Bush seems all but certain not only to reverse the strategy that Gen. Casey championed, but also to accelerate the general's departure from Iraq.'"

Casey, like every single sane observer of the Iraq situation with not one single exception, says there is no real American military solution to the (civil) war in Iraq. "It's always been my view that a heavy and sustained American military presence was not going to solve the problems in Iraq over the long term." To BushCheney Regime dead-enders and reactionary warmongers like McCain and Lieberman this is a sour note indeed and they no sooner want to hear it now than they wanted to hear it from Colin Powell before Bush launched his catastrophic war 4 years ago. Pod-Man, Cheney, McCain and the other neoCons are howling for Casey's blood and Pod-Man ends his New York Post article with a final shot, claiming The Decider "has come to understand that victory requires a general whose primary aim is victory. And that general isn't George Casey-- an American hero who simply got it wrong."