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Tag(s): 2008 Elections; Bush Admin; Bush Admin; Cheney Dick; Foreign Policy Failure Iran; Foreign Policy Failure Iraq; Impeachment; Iran War; Iraq War; Satire
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February 28, 2007 at 08:30:33

Cheney Is Recklessly "Bob"-ing Iraq and Iran

by Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers Page 2 of 3 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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Also this from Kim Murphy in the Los Angeles Times: (click here )

>>"Britain's decision to pull 1600 troops out of Iraq by spring, touted by U.S. and British leaders as a turning point in Iraqi sovereignty, was widely seen Wednesday as a telling admission that the British military could no longer sustain simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The British military is approaching 'operational failure,' former [U.K.] defense staff chief Charles Guthrie warned this week."

Blair can accept the reality in the region, CheneyBush can't. And the Republican Party will pay the price in 2008 for their leaders' unwillingness to see and deal with the disaster in front of their faces.

COMFORT FOOD FOR THE MIND

The Cheney-as-Baghdad-Bob meme would be funny except that several hundred-thousand human beings, American troops and Iraqi civilians, have died or been maimed as a result of the Bush Administration's consistent slide into delusion, and more are being slaughtered and wounded every day.

Reality to CheneyBush and the rest of the Bunker Boys is unfamiliar territory. It's much more comforting for them to rest in their bubble world of self-delusion, where just one more offensive, another infusion of troops, another tweaking of the military leadership, will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

We watched this same fantasized "turning-the-corner" scenario unfold innumerable times in the Vietnam War as well; eventually, the U.S. "surged" 500,000 troops U.S. into that quagmire, only to bring them out in humiliation several years later.

So when anti-war Democrats and moderate Republicans analyze their options to get America's troops out of Iraq and to prevent the Bush Administration from expanding the war beyond the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan into Iran, it's clear that extraordinary action is required lest the madness take us all into a moral and warmaking maelstrom from which there is no conceivable exit.

DISSENT AT NEW LEVEL OF URGENCY

That means thinking the unthinkable for many in opposition: cutting off funding for the war effort, introducing articles of impeachment in the House, initiating massive civil disobedience, avoiding '08 candidates who dance around what needs to be done in Iraq rather than actually taking steps to do it, and building support for Pentagon military brass who resign in protest (and for troops like Lieutenant Watada who refuse to participate in illegal, immoral wars), etc.

Normally, the political system in Washington would correct itself slowly over time, but that system appears to be so corrupted and frightened and confused that it will take a popular tsunami of desperate anger to get them to move and do the right thing. Besides, time is not on our side this time.

That's where you and I come in. We must not merely march and write letters and sign petitions and give money, as important and necessary as those acts are. But we also must get our hands dirty in the political trenches: run for office, volunteer to help good candidates, visit the offices of our elected representatives and senators and refuse to leave until they hear us out. We must initiate creative acts of civil disobedience that time and time again will get the word out that we love our country and will no longer tolerate its destruction and desecration from within and its reckless imperial adventuring abroad.

We really don't have a lot of time to play with here. Iraq, already a charnel house of sectarian slaughter, most assuredly will get even worse (even with many of the Sadrist forces having gone to ground until the Americans leave) into a full-scale civil-war bloodbath. A reinvigorated Taliban/Al Qaida alliance is expected to launch its Spring offensive shortly in Afghanistan, with the U.S. and NATO forces trying to counter by pre-emptively attacking their bases.

THE COMING ATTACK ON IRAN

And, most ominously, as many have reported, Israel and the United States, either together or separately, are preparing to attack Iran's nuclear and military facilities, in order to set back that nation's technological and strike capacities for at least a decade or more. This attack could well come within the next six weeks or so. See here ( http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070305fa_fact_hersh ), here ( http://www.newstatesman.com/200702190014 ) here, ( http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022107R.shtml ) and here ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6376639.stm ).

I suppose it's possible that the U.S. and Israel are playing a giant game of "chicken" with Iran, trying to scare the Iranian leaders into backing off their missile and nuclear development programs, but the evidence points to an operational run-up to a new war, using pretty much the same rollout template from 2003 Iraq. All the U.S. needs is a triggering incident, and if the Bush Administration can't find one that Congress can believe, they will, as they did in Iraq, invent one.

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www.crisispapers.org

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).