Petraeous Iraq War Report, Betrays Us…

 

Its business as usual from the Bush administration as mouthpiece David Patraeous flatly announced that no troops will be drawn down until 2008, reinforced by ambassador Crocker, who emphasized leaving is defeat. Nothing progressive – nothing new, no regret over the dead, no remorse or reflection. What was delivered was more of the same shortsighted lip service that has come to define the Bush administration and his blind loyalists who are apparently willing to trade American blood for career advancement and war profit.

On a day that saw 7 Americans killed as the total American death toll flirts with 3800, it begs the question – what is victory defined as? Petraeous, obviously in an effort to avoid going the way of General Casey, who opposed troop build-up and was quickly given his walking papers, predictably was all too willing to bend to Bush’s public relations demands that call for the mindless continuation of an unwinnable war.  

Sadly enough, “W” has dug up yet another ‘yes man.’ Why are the Democrats not holding an all night session as they dissect this wholly artificial report? With only casual research, here are some relevant questions that were colored or went altogether unanswered…

Fact: Under Petreaous’s command, training of the Iraqi military has continued to founder, and any subsequent training program will simply be a ‘do-over’ in an effort to band-aid his incompetent efforts under his leadership. Fact: There have been repeated disappearances, of weapons that were grossly mismanaged under Petreaous’s and his predecessor’s commands. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those weapons are ultimately falling in to the hands of insurgents as the chaos in the streets persists.Fact: Shortly before the 2004 presidential election Petraeous wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post as a favor to the Bush campaign, in which he applauded what he referred to as “major progress” by the Iraqi military, Iraqi police and Iraqi leadership, when the opposite was clearly the case by all independent accounts.Fact: Iraqi civilian and U.S. and Iraqi military and police deaths are up under Petraeous and continue to riseFact: The Iraqi Government continues to flounder, unable to achieve political reconciliation among warring factions on a national level, only able to foster loose knit local governing bodiesFact: The Iraqi people, are still living without regular electricity or water, fearing for their lives whenever they go out to buy groceries or by chance talk to the wrong person – which is usually a death sentenceFact: Forty percent of the middle class in Iraq has fled the country while Iran looms as the largest regional threatAmericans deserve an even-handed assessment of conditions in Iraq. However what we got was a propaganda snapshot from the same fools who told us “Mission accomplished” and “The insurgency is in the last throws…” Bush’s messenger boy Petraeous has sold out the American people and his good name as a straight shooter to appease our clown-like president.

“We know that the surge has to come to an end,” Petraeous said, according to the Associated Press. “I think everyone understands that, by about a year or so from now, we’ve got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now. The question is how do you do that . . . so that you can retain the gains we have fought so hard to achieve and so you can keep going.”

Translation – Here’s another excuse America, while we figure out what to do, if a solution even exists. There’s no doubt the country will swallow it because the only people we can rally behind to fight Bush’s folly and foolishness are the Democrats…and what have they done to counter Bush lately?  

Wait wait…Don’t tell me…Things are going well in Iraq!

 

Personally, I knew things were going well in Iraq back in May, because I knew (through some cognitive extra-sensory miracle)  that Bush’s September report on Iraq would be nothing but roses and strawberry wine. How you ask? Because our president is a liar of epidemic proportion and possesses no morals whatsoever. He treats the American people like so many sheep as he trys to distract us from the cold brutal fact that we are failing in Iraq. And now, senator Durbin has called him on it.

Days before Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress on the progress of the troop “surge” in Iraq, the Senate’s number two Democrat is accusing the administration of manipulating information in the highly anticipated Iraq report due out next week. “By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working,” Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said at a Washington think tank. Durbin, a war critic, said that he has exchanged e-mail with civilian employees who were being prodded by the administation into ‘sunshining’ the report drafts. “Some of them I correspond with almost on a daily basis. And when they sent a discouraging report about things that were happening in Baghdad, they were reminded by their superiors that’s unacceptable; we need a positive report. They were sent back for editing changes. Now that’s a fact,” Durbin said.

Its about time the Democrats, or at least one of them, is willings to go all chips in to expose this horse shit of a president for what he really is – an incompetent fool who does not understand the intricate nature of foreign policy and ramifications of that policy, who resorts to deception and bravado to cover up his lack of intelligence. Make no mistake, the decision to manipulate this data and the upcoming report was made the moment Democrats wilted on war funding earlier this year. Petraeus’ credibility should be questioned simply based on the fact he is willing to cow-tow to Bush. This report will not be General Petraeus’s report, it will be President Bush’s report. However, Petraeus’ approval rating is about four times higher than the Democrat Congresses right now so the American people will probably swallow it and the Republicans will get what they wanted from the start, more war and a brief election year reprieve. This is what happens when you can’t find your spine and vote to cut war funding.

How ridiculous is the manipulation? The report contains methodology outlines for classifying murders as criminal or sectarian reprisals in nature. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday, David Walker, the head of the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, raised questions about how those statistics were compiled. He said he is “not comfortable” with the methodology used to count the death toll. Specifically, he highlighted the fact that if a body is found with a gunshot wound in the front of the head it is classified as an ordinary crime but if the wound is in the back of the head it is considered sectarian violence.

This is the level of desparation Bush has sunk to in order to force feed us this illegal war. It is sickening.