as we said long ago , "this war is lost "

a few choice quotes from the article
Is Iraq Another Vietnam? It is Already Lost
by Robert Freeman Published on Sunday, October 22, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

"The War has not only drained the U.S. of over a trillion dollars of wealth, it has bogged the U.S. military in an unwinnable quagmire that has laid bare its once useful (because intimidating) façade of invincibility. In its place, it has left the undeniable recognition of the vulnerability of American “power” and the fragility of American will. These exposed weaknesses will only invite more challenges to American power, dragging the U.S. into a bottomless black hole of conflict that it cannot afford not to fight but that it will prove equally unable to win."

Cheney , rumsfeld , wolfowitz , and perle--before gaining notoriety under the tag of "neo-cons-- they were known as the "crazies" of the old daddy bush administration .

But even then , they were already ready with a plan to take over the middle east--the project for a new american century .

All that was lacking , as the "crazies"-- soon to be re-dubbed neo-cons , so presciently pointed out back then , was a galvanizing pearl harbor type event to traumatize the american lemmings into war frenzy and stampede them and the so-called american republic irreversibly over the proverbial precipice , transforming the Us into a romanesque global empire .

Less than eight months after george dub-ya bush's whitehouse coronation , following his appointment to the presidency by his daddy's and ron reagan's supreme court appointees --abra-ca-dabra --presto chango --like magic , we have the WTC/pentagon attacks --the collapse of the towers permanently etched into the american collective psyche--like a great pavlovian un-liberty bell to be repeatedly rung as a clarion call to middle east war by leaders like--the same clowns who were asleep at the wheel while sworn to protect us from those very same type of attacks --what a coincidence ! what a sick godsend of convenience ! talk about bizarro-world synchronicity--you'd almost think they staged it all !
wolfowitz holding 9-11 commission bovine manure , coverup report-- "looks like we made a clean getaway , boys!"

"That is why none of the putative rationales for War ever panned out. None of them were true. Iraq had had nothing to do with 9/11. It had no WMDs. It had no connections with Al Qaeda. None of that mattered. The American public was mercilessly flogged into a frothing frenzy to embrace a nakedly colonialist war to steal Iraq’s oil and put a stranglehold on China, India, and Europe, America’s new industrial competitors."

* After that last remark about "a stranghold on china , india and europe" , a side bar is necessary for a little background info ...


We have said again and again and especially since reading portions of condoleeza rice's position paper that in 2000 became the bushites' foreign policy on china --a paper naming china as america's regional competitor and rival for economic , political and military dominance in the far east/ pacific rim --that china was in the crosshairs of neo-con gunsights .

It became clear that the bush neo-cons had revived the old pentagon maxim of the 50s/ 60s that said a Us military showdown with china was inevitable --and if the Us were to win this sino-american conflict then it was best that america take on china BEFORE the window of opportunity for Us victory closed-- BEFORE china --with its one billion plus population --could modernize in terms of industry , infrastructure and weaponry and present a too formidible foe for the Us to take on .

When projecting their visions for an unrivaled american colossus standing unchallenged over the entire globe--the new american century --about 25 years into that view of the new century , the neo-cons would be forced to imagine a china as technologically modern as japan with an equally modern economy and the subsequent military prowess that such wealth and technological modernity would generate-- along with a billion plus pool of manpower from which to draw soldiers .

Understand this and you see what the neo-cons see ominously obstructing the horizon when they look out into the future new american century.

It became clear to this observer that once russia had been economically looted by the western robber barons --the once soviet super-power reduced to merely a limited regional power , the Us military adventures in afghanistan and iraq were essentially strategic "foreplay" for the main event somewhere down the line .

The neo-cons were getting into place --militarily positioning assets around the world's largest known remaining oil/energy supplies , preparing for an "eventual" forced showdown with emerging chinese power.

With the russian bear once again reduced to "sick man" status -- almost as it was back in the twilight hours of the czarist era-- there was no one left to fight--no one to stand in america's way to global dominance --And until the creation of the new "islamic fundamentalist boogeyman " , no enemy the pentagon/death merchants could use to frighten gullible americans into spending trillions of tax dollars in new cold war-esque arms races--except the emerging chinese dragon .

Unfortunately for the Us defense contractors , china wisely continued to pursue economic competition with the Us over armed confrontation , but the neo-con "positioning strategy" still would leave the Us poised to militarily cut off china , or any other nation from major world oil reserves .

Such a cut off , or even threat of oil cut off , could force china into conflict with the Us --just as japan had been forced into hostilities with the Us by a 1941 Us oil embargo , when the oil-card was played by the Us as a threat to cripple the japanese economy while japan was already at war , fighting , invading and looting china .

But returning back to the iraq war and why an american defeat is a moot issue :

The U.S. has killed 650,000 Iraqis since the invasion of 2003. That is on top of the 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five killed as a result of the U.S. sponsored economic sanctions of the 1990s. Together, that is the equivalent of another country coming into the U.S. and killing 14 million Americans. And we stupidly, obscenely balm our consciences with drivel about them “hating us for our freedoms.”

Fallujah, Najaf, Abu Ghraib, and Haditha, are synonymous in Iraq and throughout the Muslim world with wanton massacre, religious despoilation, systematized torture, and ritualistic rape and murder, all inextricably part of the U.S. occupation and its grotesquely savage style of “pacification.”

The consequence, as articulated by U.S. colonel Frederick Wellman has been all too predictable: “The insurgency doesn’t seem to be running out of new recruits. When I kill one of them, I create three.”

duh... not only do you create three insurgent for every one you kill , you left tons of ammunition and weapons unguarded and available for the insurgents to grab and use against you and you practically created the insurgency when you acted as its best recruiter by dissolving the iraqi army --throwing a quarter million trained soldiers into the ranks of the unemployed , already disaffected and disgruntled with the new regime-- a regime clearly sponsored and propped up by the occupiers.


It was precisely such incompetence that motivated Paul Bremer to disband the organs of the Iraqi state, including the Iraqi military. He released a quarter of a million trained, unemployed killers into the civilian population, there, to join the ranks of Kurdish separatists, Shi’ite militiamen, Sunni nationalists, foreign terrorists, domestic jihadists-in-training, and Rumsfeld’s notorious “Baathist dead-enders.”

It was an even more idiotic ilk of incompetence that then failed to secure ammunition depots throughout the country, turning over to this selfsame legion of resistance fighters thousands of tons of ammunition, explosives, and weaponry.

To make matters worse the american doctrine of victory through overwhelming force and firepower works against them when dealing with the iraqi insurgency .

Every burst of panic-stricken gunfire from the americans , every missile fired from helicopter gunships , every depleted uranium shell fired from an abrams tank , every 500 pound bomb dropped from f-16 jets --every dead iraqi civilian killed by Us hands has the opposite effect from "shock and awe" --it enrages , energizes and mobilizes the populace AGAINST you.

Iraq is the middle east -- a region with people famous for blood-feuds .

Long before the sicilians coined the term "vendetta" the arabs were engaged in generation after generation of blood feuding and infamous for acts of revenge such as eating the liver of a freshly killed enemy .

Every iraqi the americans kill requires from his family an act of revenge to restore the victim's and the family's honor--the americans just don't get how important the family-- the clan-- the tribe , are to a people like the iraqis .

The americans don't get it that you cannot win the hearts and minds of a people whose language , religion, culture and customs you don't understand .

You can't win hearts and minds of a people whose honor you have seriously offended and continue to offend , every time you kick down doors to houses and mosques , every time you humiliate elders--the heads of the family-clans and tribes , and every time you conduct yourselves around their women , in ways pereceived as inappropriate .

Even the many rumors of such "inappropriateness" , spread like wild fire among the populace and burn like gasoline --making more enemies for the americans , and more recruits for the insurgents .

It was incompetence of the highest order that failed to adapt ground strategy to the realities of urban guerilla warfare. It is there, on the ground, that an occupation succeeds or fails. And to succeed, the occupier must win the “hearts and minds” of the occupied people. But instead of winning hearts and minds, the U.S. used apocalyptic violence against a civilian population simply resisting invasion by a foreign army.

And the regional and global implications of this Us defeat in iraq ?

But in several important ways, Iraq will prove far more devastating for the U.S. than did Vietnam. It has increased Islamic radicalism in moderate Muslim states that are U.S. allies, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and, importantly, Pakistan. It has greatly increased Iran’s stature in the Middle East and, because of Iran’s close ties with Russia and China, their power in the world. And its offshoot War, Lebanon, has laid bare the impotence of the U.S. allied-Israeli army — supposedly one of the most powerful armies in the world — against a rag-tag band of 2,000 Hezzbolah guerilla fighters.

Worse, even as the War is lost but cannot, for political reasons, yet be quit, it is being expanded to a global scale. What was to have been a surgical war, over in months (“if not weeks”), has broadened dramatically, dragging the entire western world into its deadly maw. Iraq has greatly increased the motivation, number, skill, coordination, confidence, and reach of combatants battling the U.S., both in Iraq itself and throughout the rest of the world.

Successful strategy involves securing achievable ends from available means. The tragedy of Iraq, the one that guarantees its legacy as an incomparable catastrophe for the U.S., is that while the ends have exploded, vastly beyond America’s capacity to control, the means to secure those ends — soldiers, materiale, allies, finances, and political will — have shrunk dramatically. This is an ironclad prescription for disaster.