How Cheney Fooled Himself

President Bush planted the seeds of the destruction of his Iraq policy before the war started. Salvaging the venture will require an unprecedented degree of candor and realism from a White House that was never willing to admit -- even to itself -- how large an undertaking it was asking the American people to buy into.font> The notion that the president led the country into war through indirection or dishonesty is not the most damaging criticism of the administration. The worst possibility is that the president and his advisers believed their own propaganda. They did not prepare the American people for an arduous struggle because they honestly didn't expect one. How else to explain the fact that the president and his lieutenants consistently played down the costs of the endeavor, the number of troops required, the difficulties of overcoming tensions among the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds? Were they lying? The more logical explanation is that they didn't know what they were talking about.

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  thanks to War and Piece

Withdrawal on the Agenda

Republican Congressman Walter B. Jones (famed for insisting that the Congressional cafeteria re-label French fries as "freedom fries" on its menu), a man who represents North Carolina's 3rd Congressional District, home to the Marine's Camp LeJeune, voted enthusiastically for the Iraq War, but recently changed his mind. Last week, he became one of four congressional sponsors of a resolution calling for a timetable for withdrawal. "Do we want to be there 20 years, 30 years?" he said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "That's why this resolution is so important: We need to take a fresh look at where we are and where we're going."

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An honest conversation

What I want people to do is be honest. If you will not serve in Iraq, and no one you know will serve, stop expecting someone else to do what you will not. Therefore, it is time to stop calling for more troops, or the US to make Iraq safe. We cannot do this and even Americans are refusing to join the fight. It is time to look at your actions and realize, that despite your ideals, you oppose continuing this war. In practical terms, you have decided that this war is not worth your life or anyone you know. And million of Americans have joined you in this decision. So, with this fact evident, it is time to call for US troops to withdraw from Iraq. Not save it, not add more boots on the ground. You have already voted by your actions. It is time that you match it with your words.

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Another Year of Living Misery in Baghdad
Residents Face 'So Many Problems'

In the streets of Baghdad, people wondered Thursday what else could possibly go wrong.

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  thanks to Juan Cole

We shelter behind the myth that progress is being made
By Robert Fisk

So we are going to support the myth. As the headless bodies are found along the Tigris, as the mortuaries fill up, as the American dead grow far beyond 1,700 - and, let us remember, the Iraqi dead go into the tens of thousands - Europe and the rest of the world still support the American project.

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War of the mosques is shattering Iraq's hopes
Peter Beaumont reports from Baghdad that the gunmen are finally succeeding in pushing the sectarian tension between Shia and Sunni towards the final abyss of all-out civil war

Hagel: "Iraq could be worse than Vietnam"

Sen. Chuck Hagel addresses more than 200 Nebraska American Legion members in Grand Island on Saturday. It took 20 minutes, but it boiled down to this: The Bush team sent in too few troops to fight the war leading to today's chaos and rising deaths of Americans and Iraqis. Terrorists are "pouring in" to Iraq. Basic living standards are worse than a year ago in Iraq. Civil war is perilously close to erupting there. Allies aren't helping much. The American public is losing its trust in President Bush's handling of the conflict. And Hagel's deep fear is that it will all plunge into another Vietnam debacle, prompting Congress to force another abrupt pullout as it did in 1975. "What we don't want to happen is for this to end up another Vietnam," Hagel told the legionnaires, "because the consequences would be catastrophic." It would be far worse than Vietnam, says Hagel, a twice-wounded veteran of that conflict, which killed 58,000 Americans.

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