Some snark, some links and thee.
As soon as they got wind that the Iraq Study Group might suggest talking to Iran instead of bombing it, the neocon American Enterprise Institute commissioned its own report to ensure that the confrontation between the U.S. and Iran only deepened. Guess which one the White House went with?
If you're unsure, this puff-piece from the UK's Telegraph should remove any doubt.
The military mastermind of President George W Bush's new troop "surge" strategy for Iraq has hit out at signs that the Pentagon is watering down the proposal for political reasons.
"You cannot try and do this piecemeal. We have to implement the whole package," retired Gen Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff, who co-authored the "Choosing Victory" strategy paper, told The Sunday Telegraph.
He expressed his alarm after Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, told congressmen that the troop build-up was expected to last "a matter of months" - rather than the 18 months proposed by Gen Keane.
It should also remove any lingering doubts that Phil Sherwell and his colleague Con Coughlin at the Telegraph are Britain's main water-carriers for the American neocons, as I've mentioned before.
The real reason for the "surge": The Guardian says that today U.S. defence secretary, Robert Gates, told reporters that "the decision to deploy a Patriot missile battalion and a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf in conjunction with a "surge" of troops in Iraq was designed to show Iran that the US was not "overcommitted" in Iraq".
Not exactly "overcommitted" - just without sufficient resources to fight another major land war and with millions of pro-Iran Shiites camped across the only route of supply or retreat for the cream of the Army and Marines.
And also from the Guardian, Dan Plesch from the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy writes that most military analysts see the signals of an impending war with Iran and notes:
Having been given so much advice on what to do in Iraq - most notably by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group - the president went with the recommendations of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). So much for the idea that the Iraq debacle marginalised the neocons...In the aftermath, the US will support regime change, hoping to replace the ayatollahs with an Iran of the regions. The US and British governments now support a coalition of groups seeking a federal Iran. This may be another neocon delusion, but that may not be the point. Making Tehran concentrate on internal problems leaves it unable to act elsewhere.
Somehow I doubt that removing any Iranian interference in Iraq and plunging yet another nation into bloody chaos will prove a panacea for peace in Iraq, Iran or the wider region. But then, I'm no neocon. For them, it is a matter of faith. And when it doesn't work they will pick another country to start a war with.
David Sanger in the NY Times, a man who can usually be relied upon to report what the White House is really thinking, agrees that Iran is the next target and quotes prominent neocon and national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, who told the world yesterday that "the United States was resisting an Iranian effort “to basically establish hegemony” throughout the region". Which makes it a war that comes from the very root of neocon ideology because according to them, the only nation that is allowed a hegemony is the U.S.
Still, the plan to create a new surge for war has its problems - not least that the Iraqis don't seem to be fully behind that surge. Moderate conservative political scientist Stephen Taylor explains and sounds like he isn't fully on board either. Let's face it - the only folks that still trust the Bush administration to find its own ass with both hands and a street map are the neocon twits who convinced it to start the debacle in Iraq in the first place.
Another unconsidered problem - Turkey keeps asserting its right to do as the neocons did and invade Kurdish Iraq in pursuit of terrorists. Didn't anyone explain they can't do that unless they are American or Israeli?
Ass-Hands-Map: The Independent today reports that "the American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management".
That company is called Bearing Point. If you were paying attention, you will recall that the same company is in charge of tracking the progress of Bush's various victory plans in Iraq. The White House bases policy briefings on its reports but if Bearing Point's analysts can't even get their own books right...
Which means that, at the White House, it is all "garbage in - garbage out". Thus we get articles like this one from the McLatchy newspaper group:
President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq.
No sh*t, Sherlock!
With such a group of close-minded dunderheads, legends in their own lunchtimes, in charge of the nation it is easy to see how killing a bunch of goatherds in Somalia can magically transform into killing Al Qaida leaders - and how national policy can then be based upon that self-deception.
"There's a storm coming in."
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