Just Another Wasted Friedman Unit

By Cernig

It'd be funny if it weren't so sad but the administration has moved, since Bush's famous 2004 campaign refusal, from never admitting mistakes to admitting them but refusing to do anything about them.

Here's the main proponent of the faux-surge of mea culpas, SecDef Gates.

Talking to reporters on board his plane as he returned from a four-day swing through the Middle East, Gates said he is more optimistic about improvements in security in the embattled nation than he is about getting legislation passed by the bitterly divided government.

``In some ways we probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on legislation,'' Gates said. ``The kinds of legislation they're talking about will establish the framework of Iraq for the future so it's almost like our constitutional convention. ... And the difficulty in coming to grips with those, we may all have underestimated six or eight months ago.''

Gates' comments came a day after six Sunni Cabinet ministers from the Iraqi Accordance Front quit in protest over what they said was Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's failure to respond to a set of demands. Just two Sunnis remain in the 40-member Cabinet, and Maliki Thursday was working to get the six to reconsider.

Now, there are many on the left who could have told Gates this was going to happen - in fact we did. And now we're saying that it's pointless and futile to try shifting the goalposts from political reconcilliation back to "security improvements" which are simply putting lipstick on a a pig. There is no number of Friedman Units which will allow the current political structure in iraq to reconcile and thus there will be no significant reductions in violence.

However, in fairness to Gates, I think he would change course if Bush and Cheney would let him. But in the face of such monumental and stubborn recalcitrance, he's left with wasting more FUs as the clock runs out.

I know it's been quoted widely, but IOZ really does get to the heart of the administration's ability to muck things up by trying to run the clock out.

So. To keep score. The United States is supporting: the Shia government, which funnels money and arms to Shia militias, death squads, and insurgent/terrorist groups; the Sunni opposition, which funnels money and arms to the Sunni insurgency; the Sunni insurgency directly, so that they will combat the Shia militias as well as al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group of Sunni terrorists supposedly supported by Shia Iran; the Saudis, who fund Sunni insurgents as well--almost surely--as Sunni terrorist groups; the Iraqi Kurds, who have their sights set on an independent nation that includes a de-Arabized Kirkuk; and the Turks, who have their sights set on never, ever seeing an independent Kurdish entity anywhere, anyhow, anyway, ever, amen...

I'm tempted to misquote the old comedy show, "Soap". F**ked? We will be.