The War Is Lost
by
Paul Craig Roberts
by Paul Craig Roberts
DIGG THIS
The Pentagon’s
latest quarterly "progress" report to Congress on Iraq
is a grim tale of a lost war. The Pentagon told Congress what Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and propaganda organs such as Fox "News"
never tell the American public, namely:
-
The Sunni-based
insurgency remains "potent and viable" despite spiraling
Sunni-Shiite violence and beefed up US forces.
-
Since
the last report three months ago, Iraqi casualties from "sectarian
clashes" – the Pentagon’s euphemism for civil war – have
soared by more than 50 percent.
-
From May
when the new Iraqi government was established until August,
the average number of weekly attacks increased sharply to 800.
-
Since
the previous report, Iraqi daily casualties have jumped by 50%
from 80 per day to 120 per day. Currently, Iraqis are dying
at the rate of 43,800 per year from violence.
The Iraqi government
cowers behind the fortified walls of the "Green Zone."
On August 31, the Kurds in the north took down the Iraqi flag and
replaced it with the Kurdish one. Most of Iraq is ruled by Shiite
and Sunni militias. Conflict between them has forced 160,000 Iraqis
to flee their homes.
Who is going
to tell Bush that the war is lost?
Is Rumsfeld
going to tell him?
Is Cheney going
to tell him?
How can they
tell him after all the bravado and false reports?
This is a delusional
administration. Confronted with three major polls showing that two-thirds
of Americans oppose the Iraq war, Bush declared that he is staying
the course, demonstrating yet again his disdain for common sense
and the will of the American people.
If Bush and
his neoconservative cabal were judged by their performance they
would be ridden out of town on a rail. If a court of law judged
their actions, they would walk the plank.
Everything
this moronic regime promised about a "cakewalk" war and
the ease of pacifying Iraq and turning it into an American puppet
democracy has turned to ashes in President Bush’s mouth.
Having lost
the Iraq war, the neoconservatives are determined to initiate war
with Iran.
National security
expert John Prados says, "The pattern of manipulation and misuse
of intelligence that served the Bush administration in the drive
to start a war with Iraq is being repeated today for its neighbor
Iran."
It is now established
beyond a reasonable doubt that the neocons intentionally cooked
up false intelligence in order to justify the invasion of Iraq,
an invasion that has resulted in tens of thousands of Iraqi and
American casualties, both dead and maimed.
Aggressive
wars are themselves war crimes. To intentionally create a false
basis for an aggressive war is an act of high treason.
Alarmed by
the neoconservative drive to start a war with Iran before the US
can extricate itself from the Iraq catastrophe, the CIA firmly declared
that any Iranian nuclear weapon is a decade away. This undermines
the neoconservatives’ urgency to attack Iran now.
Neoconservative
fanatics tried to discredit the CIA with a recent report by the
House Intelligence Committee Republican staff written by neoconservative
Frederick Fleitz, a protégé of neocon heavyweight John Bolton, a
person active in concocting the false case for war against Iraq.
Fleitz alleges that the CIA is a know-nothing agency that lacks
the ability to assess Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons.
Neocons also
dismiss the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
which issued a report on August 31 reaffirming that there is no
tangible proof that Iran’s nuclear energy program has a military
aspect.
The
neoconservatives plan to plunge America into war with Iran before
they can be held accountable for the lost war in Iraq.
This
neoconservative conspiracy against the United States and Iran must
be stopped. Neocons must be removed from the government that they
have betrayed and held accountable for their crimes.
Before America
can preach democracy to the world, we must first rescue American
democracy from the Bush regime and re-establish government accountability
to the people.
September
5, 2006
Dr.
Roberts [send him mail]
is
Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow
at the Independent Institute.
He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal,
former contributing editor for National Review, and was Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is the
co-author of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Copyright
© 2006 LewRockwell.com
Paul
Craig Roberts Archives
|