Pentagon at Odds with Bush Administration
Unlike its political masters, who can repeatedly assert victory even in the face of obvious defeat, the Pentagon often needs to take more realistic, honest assessments of military situations, since it has to actually deal with people on the ground. The newest report on Iraq from the Pentagon does just that, in stark contrast with trite phrases like "we're turning a corner" and showy displays of purple thumbs somehow indicative of legislative success, even the military administration now admits that Iraq may be heading inevitably towards civil war.
Executions, kidnappings and other sectarian attacks targeting Iraqi civilians have soared over the past three months, contributing to a 51 percent rise in casualties among the population and Iraqi security forces, the report said. More than 3,000 Iraqis are killed or wounded each month, and by July, 2,000 of the casualties were the result of sectarian incidents, it showed.
[...]
In a grim revelation, the report cited the Baghdad coroner's office stating that it received 1,600 bodies in June and more than 1,800 in July, of which 90 percent were assessed to be the result of executions.
Moreover, the report said, the revenge killings perpetrated by Sunni and Shiite death squads are spreading outside the Iraqi capital into the far reaches of the country, from Basra in the south to Mosul and Kirkuk in the north. Iran and Syria are actively supporting forces fueling the unrest among religious factions, it said.
"Sustained ethno-sectarian violence is the greatest threat to security and stability in Iraq," the report said. "Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq," it said, while maintaining that civil war can still be prevented. "Coalition forces and the ISF [Iraqi Security Forces] are responding by increased targeting of both Sunni and Shi'a death squads."
None of this is news to anyone who's turned on CNN once in the last six months; the daily death tolls from bombings, kidnappings and murders is enough to give any thinking person reason to doubt the administration's endless whitewashing. Regardless, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice still have their heads in the sand as they insist that all criticism of the war in Iraq equates to moral vacillation and that we Americans have some uncontestable duty to "stay the course" in Iraq.
Bush's stance is even more ludicrous.
the president is giving a series of speeches, meant to boost support for a war that public opinion polls say a majority of Americans now believe was a mistake.
Mr. Bush continued that push in his weekly radio address, saying the war in Iraq is more than a military conflict. He says it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century.
On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation - the right of all people to speak, worship and live in liberty. On the other side are those driven by tyranny and extremism - the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest,
One could quite easily say the same thing about the Bush administration; which has been foisting its extremist views on the rest of the country (and even the world) ever since it was empowered by the 9/11 attacks.
What's significant about this report is that it's the first major official acknowledgement of what a gigantic clusterfuck Iraq has become. And thus far, there has been no official response from the report; maybe they're hoping that if they pretend nothing's there people will forget about it (which they probably will, unfortunately, if it doesn't garner any more media coverage.) And it gives valuable ammunition to Bush's political opponents, who no longer automatically assume the label of "liberal extremists" when criticizing Bush's Iraq debacle, as they're only echoing the sentiments already made by the military administration. Maybe some actual progress could be made if Bush and co. admitted some of the problems going on sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending not to hear the reality of what's happening in Iraq. But then again, that wouldn't be very politically expedient, and this entire exercise has never been about anything but politics.
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