The Biggest Lie Of The Presidential Campaign: The Surge Has Worked

This four and a half minute video was made by an Iraqi journalist in Baghdad. "Five years of war... and we live like this?... Tell the world. I want the world to know, to see how we live here." This doesn't look like the part of Baghdad where Lindsey Graham skips in and gets his swell bargains on some cute little rugs; it's the part of Baghdad where Iraqis live... and die. "In my 3 weeks back home in Baghdad 179 people were killed and no Baghdadi ever mentioned the surge to me." But why should they? That's just for domestic audiences here in America.

I just heard Tony Fratto -- last seen lying about the forged CIA letter making the case for war-- saying on CNN that Iraq doesn't have to pay back any of the rebuilding costs, despite the tens of billions of dollars they made this year in windfall oil profits. Why not? Because we'll have a long term ally, he said... to stand with us in this dangerous part of the world. I wonder what they're smoking in the White House basement these days. Same thing they're smoking on the Double Talk Express.

McBUSH: THE SURGE IS WORKING, THE SURGE IS WORKING, THE SURGE IS WORKING

McBush strategy surging in Basra

The other day I gushed a bit about how artistic and hilarious John Cusack's new film, War, Inc. is. And it is. But I don't want to de-emphasize the seriousness of the subjects the movie tackles, one of which is the way war works-- or doesn't-- in the modern world. Since seeing the film, every report I hear out of Iraq enters my consciousness through a new filter. This morning I couldn't help juxtaposing a report from CNN's Barbara Starr with the sardonic irony from War, Inc: "The Iraqi military push into the southern city of Basra is not going as well as American officials had hoped, despite President Bush's high praise for the operation, several U.S. officials said Friday." Translation: U.S. warplanes are bombing Basra, the second-biggest city in Iraq, as well as Shi'a neighborhoods in Baghdad. The bombing-- like the devastating bombing in Turagistan that resulted in a whole dance team with prosthetic legs-- is strictly precision, of course. The precision bombing has resulted in hundreds of casualties among women and children and billions of dollars worth of damage to vital Iraqi infrastructure. (In Baghdad alone there have been close to a thousand deaths and serious casualties, more proof the surge is working-- just like the prosthetic dancer team in War, Inc proved the war there was a raging success.)

A secret U.S. intelligence report on the situation on the ground paints a very dire picture. There are mutinies in the Iraqi Army and in the police force-- and the Mahdi Army opened new fronts in Nasiriya, Karbala, Hilla, and Diwaniya. Meanwhile the government controls less than 25% of the city. What's left of the British Army in Basra is refusing to get involved.

Bush claimed the fighting is still more proof that the surge is working and that the battles threatening to consume the whole country is a fight against criminals. He credits the puppet Maliki government with taking the initiative and strutting its stuff. The stuff is apparently not ready for strutting, though Maliki and his brother-in-law are in Basra directing operations and calling his one-time Shi'a allies worse than al-Qaeda. Its a shame that Cheney, McCain and Lieberman-- who were in Iraq 2 weeks ago urging Maliki to get tough and get tough NOW-- aren't holed up with them in a bunker.

The Iraqi Parliament tried to meet to discuss the crisis but so many members are boycotting the government-- including the largest Shi'a bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, which includes Maliki's own Dawa party-- that they didn't come close to a quorum. Al-Jazeera is reporting that the government is offering bribes to any Madhi militiamen who lay down their arms.

Falah Shanshal, an MP from the Sadrist bloc, told Al Jazeera that al-Maliki's offer to reward fighters for turning over their weapons was "a cheap stunt."

"This is the approach of tyrants... they are not achieving anything in Basra and they are relying on the occupation's air power and those in Basra are collaborating with the occupations to kill their own people," he said.

Still consumed with his personal failings in Vietnam, a doddering and obsessed John McCain sees Iraq as an opportunity to prove something about himself. His unresolved psychosis threatens to drag America into a spiral of wars and there are some American voters foolish enough to buy it. Iraqi proxies for the occupation, which the entire McBush strategy is based on, are failing miserably. According to today's NY Times, "the need to call in the American-led forces raised questions about the Iraqi Army’s ability to wage a successful campaign on its own... [although] "Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said the United States had known of the Basra operation in advance, suggesting a good deal of coordination between the United States and Iraq."

Despite rising concern over the violence, one senior administration official suggested that the operation in Basra reflected a model of future operations. The official cited the strategy outlined by Gen. David H. Petraeus to reduce the American presence in Iraq, eventually, to a limited role supporting Iraqi forces without being involved in day-to-day operations to protect the Iraqi public. In testimony to Congress in September, General Petraeus called that phase of operations “overwatch.”

“This is what overwatch looks like,” the official said, referring to the American role in Basra so far.

Around Iraq, sectarian violence also erupted on Friday.

American forces shelled Asriyah in the Touz Khormato district, about 50 miles northeast of Baghdad, in Kirkuk Province, killing two civilians. In Diwaniya, in the southeast, Mahdi Army gunmen attacked the mayor’s office in the Gammas district, killing the mayor.
In Mahmudiya, fierce clashes broke out between the Mahdi Army and Iraqi and American forces in the city center. And in Nasiriya, northwest of Basra, violence erupted after two days of calm, as Mahdi Army gunmen attacked Iraqi Army tanks that patrolled the city, enforcing a curfew.

As the blood pooled on village streets and ran into city gutters, news arrived of older, though no less wrenching deaths. American military officials said that, “acting on a tip,” American soldiers and Iraqi police officers had stumbled upon a mass grave containing 37 bodies in Muqdadiya, an area of palm orchards northeast of Baquba.

Some of the bodies showed signs of torture, the American military said.

The American people are getting a preview of what a 3rd Bush term, personified by warmongers like McCain, Lieberman and Graham, would be like. It's up to use to make sure when Bush leaves the White House next January he takes his failed and disastrous policies and agenda with him.

SURGE FAILS TO PROTECT CIVILIAN LIVES IN IRAQ... BUT WILL IT SAVE JOHN McBUSH'S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN?

If Bush, Cheney, McCain, Lieberman, and (when he's not looking for bargains on those darling little rugs in the wreckage of Baghdad) Lindsey Graham keep chanting that the surge is a success, how many people will get sucked in? Not many, as these individuals are not viewed as particularly credible by the American people. Cheney's pronouncements, in particular, are considered worthless by the vast majority of Americans, including a growing number of Republicans. (And despite what the Neocon authors of the Iraq catastrophe claim, Cheney's credibility among Iraqis is as valid as Iraqis bringing American occupiers flowers and sweets.) The problem is that their dubious claims of success are echoed by the corporate media, a corporate media which barely covers Iraq any longer other than to repeat the claims of how well it's all going. One almost never hears the word "surge," without the word "successful" attached to it. McCain's entire campaign is based on it.

Yesterday Martin Heinrich, highly favored to be the next congressman from Albuquerque explained that the only claim to success Republicans can make for the surge is by playing with words. "Even though there may be reductions in violence, people want to see an end to it. Whether or not the surge is working depends on which goal posts you measure by. If you measure by the goal posts that the administration created for itself, its absolutely not working. It was supposed to give breathing room to the political side so they could pull the disparate ethnic communities together and unify an approach to government and those goal posts certainly haven't been met." Even a Regime toady like Bush's political general, David Petraeus, agrees more with Martin's assessment than with McCain's.

Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday.

Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services.

Not all Democratic politicians see it the same way and grassroots Democrats should demand more leaders like Martin and less like... Hillary. A couple of months ago Matthew Yglesias pointed out a disturbing scene at Bush's final State of the Union.

When Bush proclaimed, “Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among terrorists there is no doubt,” Clinton sprang to her feet in applause but Obama remained firmly seated. The president’s line divided most of the Democratic audience, with nearly half standing to applaud and the other half sitting in stony silence.

When McCain and the two other stooges were in Iraq last week for his taxpayer financed campaign jaunt-cum-photo op, little fact finding was involved; there was no time because of all the TV "interviews" where they could declare the surge a success. Unfortunately for them, the insurgents weren't cooperating and a rocket attack on the "secure" Green Zone marked the visits by Cheney and the Three Stooges.
Today's NY Times reports another few dozen Iraqis killed in an attack on a military base. That fits right in with the McBush rhetoric: the surge is working, but not well enough to bring our troops home.

A suicide car bomber penetrated tight security to strike an Iraqi military base on Sunday in the deadliest of a series of attacks that killed at least 42 people across Iraq. In Baghdad, the U.S.-protected Green Zone came under heavy fire by rockets or mortar rounds.

...The attacks underscored the fragility of Iraq's security, despite a decline in violence over the past year. They also came as the U.S. military death toll in Iraq nears 4,000.

The U.S. response included airstrikes that killed at least a dozen civilians, some of whom could well have been insurgents. Buried in the Times story is an ominous sign that McBush is again trying to distort reality with propaganda:

The violence was reported by police officials who declined to be identified because they weren't supposed to release the information.

Iraqis bitterly recognized McCain's pit stop in their devastated country, on the way to St James Place fundraiser for what it was: a cynical campaign stop in need of an action backdrop for the voters back home. For Iraqi civilians the action never stops.

Police said at least 13 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 42 people wounded-- 30 soldiers and 12 civilians-- in the attack. Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, has been described by the U.S. as the last urban stronghold of the Sunni-led al-Qaida in Iraq.

Shiite extremists were suspected to be behind the barrages against the Green Zone, which houses the U.S. and British embassies and the Iraqi government headquarters.

About 10 detonations were heard starting shortly before 6 am in the sprawling area in central Baghdad. Several other mortars or rockets slammed into the area throughout the day.

The U.S. public address system in the Green Zone warned people to ''duck and cover'' and to stay away from windows following the attacks.

...On Saturday, U.S. officials said three American soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing that also killed two Iraqi civilians northwest of Baghdad. The latest deaths brought to 3,996 the number of U.S. service members and Pentagon civilians who have died since the war began on March 20, 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

UPDATE: McCAIN'S RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE IS RIDING ON IRAQ

Although Kevin Drum points to the mirror-image Bush-McCain policies both in Iraq and domestically, this morning's L.A. Times claims that his candidacy will be made or broken on Iraq. Even if the corporate media can convince itself and gullible voters that the surge is working, McCain's overall record on the hated war isn't something anyone rationale would want to reward with a promotion. In fact, based on Iraq, he should probably go back to a nice city council job (small city)

Before the war, McCain predicted a quick and easy victory, not a vicious insurgency. He issued dire warnings about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction but didn't read the full 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that showed gaps in the intelligence.

UPDATE: I HATE TO THINK WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE IF THE SURGE WASN'T WORKING

Despite the McCain propaganda to the contrary, Iraq was a smoldering wreck today. The Green Zone was bombed and 54 people were killed around the country. CNN and MSNBC both just announced that another 4 U.S. soldiers were killed in a bomb blast, bringing us to another horrible landmark, 4,000 dead military personnel.

Considering the number of elected officials and candidates who are willing to talk about the mess in Iraq, we might listen to one who WANTS to

Word is that when he heard John McCain was prevailing in the New Hampshire Republican primary, neocon nutjob Norman Podhoretz started jumping up and down squealing, "The Surge! The Surge!" (Senator McCain, you'll recall, is on record as supporting the Surge if it means our staying in Iraq for another leventy-kajillion years. Actually, this is just a guess--he hasn't specified an outer time limit.)

Of course the neocons came into existence for the purpose of misunderstanding absolutely everything in the universe, but at an elevated level of viciousness, violence, and all-around scumbuggery, so Pappy Norm is just upholding the tradition. "We're wrong, cosmically wrong, we're in your face, and we dump doody on you," as they say at neocon pep rallies.

On one level, true, the Surge has been an all but unmitigated triumph: It has, incredibly, gotten Iraq not only off the front page but pretty much out of the news. In all likelihood, among the less neolithic of the sociopaths who run our foreign policy, the ones less given to self-delusion as a way of life, this was probably the only goal of the Surge. It was always about politics.

American politics, that is, not Iraqi. Iraqi politics remains an unholy mess. Which is one measure of the total failure of the Surge, since the whole point was to bring the Iraqi government to the point of being able to control the country.

You might think that the fact that there's a presidential election in progress would provide just the swellest opportunity to look at what the hell we think we're doing in Iraq and how we can mitigate the catastrophe we've produced there--not to mention extricate ourselves from it. You might think that, but it appears you would be wrong. The election seems instead the perfect opportunity for never mentioning it--at least among the nonfringe candidates.

So it's interesting to see that Florida Rep. Robert Wexler is actually making the Surge an issue in his reelection campaign. In a recent mailing to his e-mail list, recalling that "a few weeks ago I voted again to deny [Iraq war] funding without a timetable," he wrote:

I am bothered by the recent movement to repackage the Surge as a success. Today, I released an editorial (below and also published on the Daily Kos) regarding my view of the Surge's so-called "success." If you have a moment, please read it when you get a chance.

Oh, there are a lot of people talking about the Surge, but they're mostly "out of sight, out of mind," like the Iraq occupation itself. Even assuming that there has been a significant reduction in violence (and one always has to be careful where information is significantly controlled by an administration that proudly practices the founding principle of the modern Conservative Movement: NEVER RESORT TO THE TRUTH UNTIL YOU'VE EXHAUSTED EVERY IMAGINABLE LIE), there are all sorts of nasty considerations--oh, things like large-scale American buying off of erstwhile insurgents (welfare for Islamofascists?), and the tactical withdrawal of important elements of the struggle, biding their time till the hated Americans are gone and they can get back to killing each other.

Anyway, the mere fact that Representative Wexler wants us to be talking about the Surge, and indeed the whole subject of Iraq, is refreshing. So why don't we take a listen to what he has to say? (Note: All emphasis is in the original, except that I've scaled back the original's boldface italics to plain boldface.)

A Surge of More Lies
By Congressman Robert Wexler

A new troubling myth has taken hold in Washington and it is critical that the record is set straight. According to the mainstream media, Republicans, and unfortunately even some Democrats, the President's surge in Iraq has been a resounding success. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

This assertion is disingenuous, factually incorrect, and negatively impacts America's national security. The Surge had a clear and defined objective - to create stability and security - enabling the Iraqi government to enact lasting political solutions and foster genuine reconciliation and cooperation between Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds.

This has not happened.

There has been negligible political progress in Iraq, and we are no closer to solving the complex problems - including a power sharing government, oil revenue agreement and new constitution - than we were before the Administration upped the ante and sent 30,000 more troops to Iraq.

Too many Democrats in Congress are again surrendering to General Petraeus and have failed to challenge the Bush Administration's claims that the surge has been successful. In fact -- it is just the opposite.

The reduction in violence in Iraq has exposed the continuing failure of Iraqi officials to solve their substantial political rifts. By President Bush's own stated goal of political progress, the Surge has failed.

Of course raising troop levels has increased security - a strategy the Bush administration ignored when presented by General Shinseki before the war in Iraq began - but the fundamental internal Iraqi problems remain and the factors that were accelerating the civil war in 2007 have simply been put on hold.

The military progress is a testament to the patience and dedication of our brave troops - even in the face of 15 month-long deployments followed by insufficient Veteran's health services when they return home. They have performed brilliantly - despite the insult of having President Bush recently veto a military spending bill that enhanced funding and benefits, and increased care.

Despite the efforts of American soldiers, the surge alone cannot bring about the political solutions needed to end centuries of sectarian divide.

As it stands, little on the ground supports the assertion that Iraqis are ready to stand up and govern themselves. Too few Iraqi troops are trained, equipped and combat ready, and they cannot yet provide adequate security. Loyalty is also an issue in the Iraqi army as Al Queda and Sunni insurgents infliltrate their defense forces. The consequences turned deadly just recently when an Iraqi soldier purposely killed two U.S. troops.

On the streets of Baghdad and Mosul, the Sunni and Shia factions have paused their fighting, awaiting guarantees and protections that have not yet been delivered. As Iraqi refugees return, there is no mechanism to help them rebuild their lives, nor recover their now-occupied homes. Neighborhoods once mixed are now segregated.

In Northern Iraq, Kurdish terrorists conducting nefarious operations across the border into Turkey have compelled our NATO ally to strike at bases, inflaming tensions between Baghdad and Ankara.

The surge is working? We suffered more U.S. casualties in 2007 than in any other year of the war. We can't afford any more of this type of success.

How can we create the situation that is most likely to deliver political progress in Iraq? Not by continuing the surge and occupation. Our best chance (there is no guarantee) is by putting real pressure on the Iraqi government to force action. Telling the national and local Iraqi leaders that we are withdrawing our troops can help accomplish this goal. Today, the majority Iraqi Shia government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has little incentive to act when American troops remain in the country to provide security and stability.

Based on the Administration's plan, John McCain's proposal of a 100-year US occupation could be a reality!

The Democratic Congress must act aggressively to first cut off funding for the surge and then the entire war. Many of my colleagues avoided a showdown with the administration because they mistakenly believed such a fight would endanger the safety of the troops.

In fact, we must accept that every soldier killed or injured in the coming months should have already been home. Every billion dollars of war-appropriations we spend from here on should have been spent on genuine priorities here at home such as children's heath care.

Enough is enough: While the Administration over-commits American forces in Iraq, we see Al Qaeda-regrouping and Osama Bin Laden still at large. We remain seriously bogged down in Afghanistan, and are witnessing a crisis in Pakistan that has left a nuclear country on the brink of a meltdown. America's resources and attention are desperately needed elsewhere and our soldiers must no longer be needlessly sacrificed as we wait for Iraqis to stand up.

The Surge has failed. If my colleagues gullibly accept the moving rationale for the Surge, just as so many have for the war itself, we will have failed as well.

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