[NYTr] A General Dissembles

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

TruthDig via The Nation - Sep 12, 2007
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070924&s=truthdig

A General Dissembles

by Robert Scheer

Of course, Gen. David Petraeus predicts success in the Iraq War. What
wonders couldn't generals achieve with more troops and more time? The
battle is always going well until it is lost, and then they blame
defeat on the politicians and the public.

There's no shortage of retired generals who will tell you we could have
won in Vietnam, if only we had sent more troops, or bombed the dikes in
the North, or been willing to kill more than the 3.4 million Vietnamese
who died along with 59,000 American soldiers. Instead, the politicians
and public, led by that bleeding heart President Richard Nixon, lost
the will to win. Thus, the dominos fell to communism, and Red China and
Red Vietnam now rule the world by dint of military force. Have you been
to Wal-Mart lately? The triumph of communism is total.

Once again, we have a general repeatedly promising to save western
civilization by turning the corner in yet another intractable and
unnecessary foreign war. Back on Sept. 26, 2004, in the weeks before
the midterm congressional elections, Petraeus took to the op-ed page of
the Washington Post to make sure the voters didn't vote wrong. Despite
appearances, he claimed the war in Iraq was going very well: "I see
tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the
ground up," Petraeus wrote. "The institutions that oversee them are
being re-established from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping
forward, leading their country and their security forces
courageously ... there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis
to shoulder more of the load for their own security, something they are
keen to do."

So keen, it makes one's heart swell. So keen that three years later,
after the expenditure of $450 billion more in taxpayer funds, and more
US troops in proportion to the Iraqi population than, at the height of
the Vietnam War, we had in Vietnam, the good general now insists it
would be disastrous to even think about bringing any American troops
home before next summer.

That's at least another $150 billion and many more Iraqi and US lives
wasted. But wait--Ryan C. Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, also
testified before Congress this week with Petraeus, and he has more good
news about what he still celebrates as the "liberation of Iraq."
Remember that Bush Administration promise that the oil-rich Iraqis
would pick up the check for the cost of their liberation? Well, Crocker
is bullish on that front: the Iraqi economy is on schedule to grow by 6
percent, according to his testimony. Perhaps he is referring to the
additional money dumped into Iraq's economy by American taxpayers
chipping in for the surge.

He certainly wasn't basing his estimate on any improvement in Iraqi oil
production or any other economic component. As the International
Monetary Fund reported last month in its annual review of Iraq's
economy, "Economic growth has been slower than expected at the time of
the last (review) mainly because the expected expansion of oil
production has failed to materialize." In case you haven't noticed, oil
is the Iraqi economy, yet a recent GAO report stated an additional $57
billion in US tax dollars will be needed to bring oil and electricity
production to the level where it can satisfy Iraq's domestic demand by
the year 2015.

Ambassador Crocker actually had the nerve to compare the bloody
religious fratricide in Iraq, which our inane invasion unleashed, to
the American battle over state's rights, once again reducing the
complexities of world history to an easily understood but totally
irrelevant example from the American experience. In that case, a better
analogy might have been made to the American Indian wars, given that
the only thing the United States has been able to do effectively in
Iraq is unleash superior firepower. At the current rate, Iraq will be
liberated when there are no Iraqis.

Perhaps that is why this week's ABC/BBC poll shows that 70 percent of
Iraqis believe security has deteriorated since the surge and that 60
percent believe attacks on US forces are justified. And 93 percent of
Sunnis, whom the general and ambassador claim are joining our side,
want to see us dead.

As for optimism, only 29 percent of Iraqis now think the situation will
get better, as opposed to 64 percent who shared that optimism before
the surge--which almost 70 percent of Iraqis believe has "hampered
conditions for political dialogue, reconstruction and economic
development."

So, ambassadors and generals lie. Get used to it.