Our youth in the military and innocent Iraqis suffer because of this. How? Why? All of this talk about the surge is about nothing. As Petraeus notes the US military in Iraq will be "a good bit smaller than we are right now" simply because of manpower as we just don't have enough troops to continue the surge five or six months from now.

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W has committed war crimes against both the Islamic countries as his "Shock and Awe" tactic has decimated-Afghanistan and Iraq, but also against our military.

W has failed so now the thugs in his administration will come up with lies to feed the US public, most notably by altering Petraeus' September report!

Rumsfeld's statement about not going to war with the army you wished you had, but the army you had, was insane and since W didn't do a thing to protect our soldiers he's responsible for the crimes that have been perpetrated against them. There was no imminent threat from Hussein's WMD-which were non-existent-so why didn't big bro 43 and Rummy wait until they possessed the military they wanted? No, they wanted to rush our military off in HumVees that weren't protected so they could accomplish what? Nothing was defined so how could we know when they had achieved "Mission Accomplished"?

W is so gruesomely abusing our soldiers that they are forced to drink energy drinks to stay awake. They can't relax and even when they go home their minds are reliving the horrors of the urban guerrilla warfare that doofus-in-chief has subjected them to.

Not only Senator Reid is convinced we've failed in Iraq, but the article US 'Surge' in Iraq 'Likely to Fail': British Lawmakers indicates our only remaining ally is also.

The latest strategy realignment of turning Sunnis against their former al-Qaeda comrades is just the latest hypocrisy as the article Former Insurgents Face al-Qaeda Wrath indicates.

The article U.S. Military Starts New Iraq Offensive should bring us hope, if we hadn't learned from the past.

The article Fatigue cripples US army in Iraq states "Exhaustion and combat stress are besieging US troops in Iraq as they battle with a new type of warfare. Some even rely on Red Bull to get through the day. As desertions and absences increase, the military is struggling to cope with the crisis.... They are on duty for five days at a time and off for two days. When they get back to the forward operating base, they do their laundry and sleep and count the days until they will get home. It is an exhaustion that accumulates over the patrols and the rotations, over the multiple deployments, until it all joins up, wiping out any memory of leave or time at home. Until life is nothing but Iraq...A whole army is exhausted and worn out....Where once the war in Iraq was defined in conversations with these men by untenable ideas - bringing democracy or defeating al-Qaeda - these days the war in Iraq is defined by different ways of expressing the idea of being weary. It is a theme that is endlessly reiterated as you travel around Iraq.”

'The army is worn out. We are just keeping people in theatre who are exhausted,' says a soldier working for the US army public affairs office who is supposed to be telling me how well things have been going since the 'surge' in Baghdad began.

They are not supposed to talk like this. We are driving and another of the public affairs team adds bitterly: 'We should just be allowed to tell the media what is happening here. Let them know that people are worn out. So that their families know back home. But it's like we've become no more than numbers now."

This is an atrocity W is perpetrating against soldiers who have served our country. Maybe "Chicken Hawks" such as "bubble boy" and the impotent, "dickless president of vice" haven't experienced the horrors of war but can't they have common compassion for our military?"

It is a weariness that has created its own culture of superstition. There are vehicle commanders who will not let the infantrymen in the back fall asleep on long operations - not because they want the men alert, but because, they say, bad things happen when people fall asleep. So the soldiers drink multiple cans of Rip It and Red Bull to stay alert and wired. But the exhaustion of the US army emerges most powerfully in the details of these soldiers' frayed and worn-out lives. Everywhere you go you hear the same complaints: soldiers talk about divorces, or problems with the girlfriends that they don't see, or about the children who have been born and who are growing up largely without them."

Our military, and their families decimated for what? They have been subjected to "Stop Loss" and longer rotations and deteriorating equipment and morale because of "GWOT"! 'I counted it the other day,' says a major whose partner is also a soldier.

"Not only that," says Major Stacie Caswell, an occupational therapist with a combat stress unit, "but because of the nature of what we do now, the number of tasks in comparison with previous generations - even as you are finishing your 15 months here you are immediately planning and training for your next tour.' Valentine adds: 'There is no decompression."

W has committed war crimes against our military! The suicide rate in the US military has never been higher than now and this goof, who skipped out on his reserve duties, tries to pretend that he understands the cares of reservists. He has trapped them in unending urban guerrilla warfare just for the sake of a few red state votes.

All of the foolish ploys that he has utilized against the non-specific "those who are against us" in his Iraqi theatre of GWOT proves that nothing can work! Years ago Rumsfeld's "slog memo" realized that we could ever kill enough terrorists quickly enough to reduce the numbers of terrorists-whose very numbers are increasing geometrically as a result of W's use of "Shock and Awe". Hasn't someone read that memo to the "intellectually incurious" one?

Since W's GWOT policies are failing what can he do other than to spew propaganda? On August 22nd, 2007 W is comparing the Iraq quagmire to the Vietnam one and you have to wonder who is letting the fool make these idiotic views known to the public. He said "Many argued that if we pulled out, there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people. The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be...Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea," said Bush, who pleaded for patience with the US-led security crackdown in Iraq. US troops there "are carrying out a surge that is helping bring former Sunni insurgents into the fight against Al Qaeda, clearing the terrorists out of population centers, and giving families in liberated Iraqi cities their first look at decent and normal life".

The article US 'Surge' in Iraq 'Likely to Fail': British Lawmakers states "It is too early to provide a definitive assessment of the US 'surge' but it does not look likely succeed," the House of Commons Foreign Affairs committee said in a wide-ranging document.

"The committee believes that the success of this strategy will ultimately ride on whether Iraq's politicians are able to reach agreement on a number of key issues."

Instead, it called on the government to set out what action it was taking to foster political reconciliation between Sunni and Shia Muslims and Kurds in Iraq. And it called for evidence of Iran's backing for insurgents in the south."

This is the best W can get in regards to international support for his illegal Iraq war. W's boys are so excited about former insurgents fighting al-Qaeda. It is all hypocrisy as the article Former Insurgents Face al-Qaeda Wrath deals with this and a particular participant, a Omam Abed-a codename meaning "courageous slave", as "The Sunni militiamen have grown leery of al-Qaeda in Iraq and its ambitions, including self-proclaimed aims of establishing an Islamic state.  The Pentagon, in turn, has latched onto its most successful strategy in months: partnering with former extremists who have the local know-how to help root out al-Qaeda in Iraq...Last month, two of Abed's best friends, both 18-year-old members who also decided to aid U.S. forces, were dragged out of their high school during final exams and beheaded. Their bodies were flung up into a tree with the severed heads displayed on the sidewalk below, according to Abed and U.S. military officers stationed in the area. There was no claim of responsibility, but the scene didn't need one. All knew it was a ghastly warning to residents who choose to challenge al-Qaeda in Iraq, which takes inspiration from Osama bin Laden but whose direct links to his terror network is unclear."

Is Abed safe? "Several times each week, mortars fall on the headquarters of Abed's group - known by various names including the Freedom Fighters and Amariyah Volunteers. The group's leader, a 40-year-old who uses the nom-de-guerre Abu Abed, said his fighters foiled two attacks in which suicide bombers disguised as women tried to infiltrate security around his base.

"(Al-Qaeda) is trying to get me or my family. I'm constantly changing locations - not staying in one place longer than a few hours - and moving my children," said Abu Abed, who also refused to comment on his own insurgent past."

The US has to get bureaucrats to sign off for money to pay these people who are betraying people they worked for and with in (Al-Qaeda) as "Until the contract wins U.S. approval, the fighters remain unpaid volunteers.”

Capt. Dustin Mitchell, with the 1st Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade Reconnaissance Troop, said it sometimes creates awkward moments for his soldiers.

"We try to help them out within the guidelines if our commanders approve it," said the Louisville, Ky., native. "If not, we're the guys who look them in the eye and have to say, 'I'm sorry.'"

How can the US military conceivably believe these Sunnis won't become blow-backs when they get a better deal or just decide to kill the US infidels?

The article U.S. Military Starts New Iraq Offensive states "The U.S. military launched a new offensive on Monday aimed at cracking down on Sunni and Shiite extremists, according to a statement."

We've heard this before. The death only moved its "Whack-a-Mole" routine to northwest Iraq where the article At Least 250 Dead After Iraq Blasts states "Emergency workers and grieving relatives uncovered dozens of bodies in the wreckage of clay houses in northwest Iraq on Wednesday, sending the death toll from suicide truck bombings of a small Kurdish sect to at least 250 – the war's deadliest attack on a single area.”

A U.S. general said the nearly simultaneous strikes against the Yazidis, who have been attacked by Muslim extremists who consider them infidels, was an act of "ethnic cleansing." An American military spokesman blamed the attack on al-Qaeda."

Now W is trying to elongate the war and bring in more enemies as news that W's administration will add Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps to the list of foreign terrorist organizations. It would be the first time that a branch of a country's military has been added to the list. W really hates this particular "those who are against us" and is trying to say this is a response to the Revolutionary Guard's increasing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The statement singled out Sunni insurgents linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq and said the Shiite extremists were being backed by Iran. The military has stepped up its rhetoric recently against Tehran, which is accused of supplying militias with arms and training to attack U.S. forces. Iran denies the allegations.

This is reminiscent to the time when W accused Hussein of being involved with 9/11 and having unmanned drones ready to drop WMD at our cities in 45 minutes.

How did it get to this? W and Rove realized that historically the GOP wins votes when it is seen as the aggressor in phantom wars against unknown enemies. Reagan's "Just say No war against drugs" and "evil Empire" are models that Herr Karl utilized.

The article Early Clash Over Iraq Report states "Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration's progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense...

"Americans deserve an even-handed assessment of conditions in Iraq. Sadly, we will only receive a snapshot from the same people who told us the mission was accomplished and the insurgency was in its last throes," warned House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.).  But both the White House and Congress have widely described the assessment as coming from Petraeus. Bush has repeatedly referred to the general as the one who will be delivering the report in September and has implored the public and Republicans in Congress to withhold judgment until then."

This is what the US military is considering "We know that the surge has to come to an end," Petraeus 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."

All of this talk about the surge is about nothing. As Petraeus notes the US military in Iraq will be "a good bit smaller than we are right now" simply because of manpower. We won't hear this from our 4th estate or big bro 43. W wants to attack Democrats about being weak on terrorism, but every advisor of his knows we just don't have enough troops to continue the surge after 5 or 6 months from now.

It is the blueprint that W has used from the beginning. Call an Iraq disaster "Mission Accomplished" and see how many red voters you pick up. W has failed so now his boys will come up with lies to feed the US public. The lies aren't particularly new because they all center around one of W's failed policies, particularly "Operation Iraqi Freedom"!

Authors Bio:
Winston Smith is an ex-Social Worker. I worked in child welfare, and in medical settings and in homeless settings. In the later our facility was geared as a permanent address for people to apply for welfare. Once they received that we could send them to facilities in which their welfare paid the bill and provided enough for a meager existence. We also referred people to vocational rehabilitation services. Many of the people who came to us were people who were clearly emotionally ill, but Reagan's slashing of the services for these people caused them to become homeless. One woman I dealt with-St. Jane, believed she was in direct communication with God, urinated freely without using the facilities and she had 47 bags of trash which were prized possessions. She got welfare and was sent to a facility were she could survive. The rule was that our facility could be used 1 time only as we had too many people who thought that the services that we provided we would lift them from the dire straights that they were in. Well, we provided our services for St. Jane around Thanksgiving. On Christmas Eve she was back with her 47 bags of trash and wanted to stay at our facility. I informed my superior of this situation, but we declined to provide services for St. Jane. She slept in front of our facility in a snowstorm. The local rag took the picture and excoriated us for what we did. The local welfare department asked her where she would like to live. St. Jane said Chicago because she liked the wind. She knew on one there. She and her 47 bags of trash of were carted onto a train for the windy city and never of again. The local welfare department was glad to get shed of her. Social welfare in the mid-1980's was geared to blame the victim. Ill people were sent home from hospitals were no one was going to help them because social welfare budgets were slashed by Reagan. Bush 41's â"thousand points of lightâ" was just another way to shaft the weakest in our society. Bush 43's faith based initiative was just another attempt to reduce social welfare services. Reagan's â"Just say Noâ" was the pinnacle of hypocrisy. No services for those who desperately needed them under the guise of tough love.

Obviously I became burnt out by too much indifference regarding our weak and weary. I couldn't look at desperate people and could not get myself to say that what I could offer them wouldn't really help themâ"?it would only get them out of my office to be another person's problem, until the local welfare department carted them away.

I had little interest in politics until the illegal Iraq War started. Growing up in the 1960's caused me to understand that the GOP used war to attract right-wing extremists to vote for them. When â"Tricky Dick'sâ" secret plan to end the Vietnam War unfolded into elongating our presence there for 8 years I knew that I would never believe a GOP war-monger again. I dislike Obama's plan to escalate our presence in Afghanistan and see it as a craven attempt to placate the GOP. Maybe he'll reduce the GOP's attacks against him, but it will at the expense of alienating his base.