DID YOU HEAR THE NEWS? IRAQ WAR IS A DISASTER

Rousseau's WAR updated slightly by Lucas

If you read Daily Kos or Crooks & Liars, FDL, HuffPo or any of hundreds of progressive blogs, you are well aware of what a catastrophe the occupation of Iraq is. The corporate media works closely with the Bush Regime in keeping that down. Still an overwhelming majority of Americans now view the invasion and occupation of Iraq as a disaster. Now the dirty fucking hippies at the Pentagon are letting the cat out of the bag too. A newly released study opens with these words: "Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle." The study was published by the National Defense University's Institute for Strategic Studies (a Defense Department reserach center).

The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.

The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush's projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.

...At the time the report was written last fall, more than 4,000 U.S. and foreign troops, more than 7,500 Iraqi security forces and as many as 82,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed and tens of thousands of others wounded, while the cost of the war since March 2003 was estimated at $450 billion.

"No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans' benefits or the total impact on service personnel and materiel," wrote Collins, who was involved in planning post-invasion humanitarian operations.

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers" from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East," the report continued.

The addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year to halt the country's descent into all-out civil war has improved security, but not enough to ensure that the country emerges as a stable democracy at peace with its neighbors, the report said.

Interesting that the Bush Regime's own Defense Department would release a study with such a negative critique of, in effect, Bush's legacy and McCain's plans to extend Bush's presidency for 4 years. The report points to Donald Rumsfeld as the worst culprit but strongly implies that a great deal of blame must be borne by Bush and his two incompetent National Security Advisors, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, saying that "senior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect."