Charles Pierce: How a New Iraq War Is Being Fought

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/28836-focus-how-a-new-iraq-war-is-being-fought

It is now conventional wisdom that CPAC this year has been a triumph for conservative hawks, and that, while Rand Paul is still popular in the hall, his extended moment as the lead act in that particular hootenanny finally may have passed. Folks are up there wanting to get their war on, and the laptop bombardiers in the audience are lapping it up. (This shebeen is in the market for any photo of the audience taken at that moment when Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods asked for all the veterans in the house to stand.) ISIS is coming for all of us, and most of the potential Republican candidates are waiting for it with Leadership, Authenticity, Exceptionalism, and a vast arsenal of featherweight banalities

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You don't need a backhoe to dig out the subtext here, the one that likely is going to be both a primary line of attack for the Republicans, and also their attempt to whitewash in history the colossal blunder committed by the previous Republican administration in launching the war in Iraq. We've already heard quite a bit from the John McCain-Huckleberry Butchmeup axis of weebles about how everything was going swimmingly after the surge until the president made the blunder of abiding by a Status of Forces agreement signed by his predecessor. This is the inevitable second act of that drama -- that our troops were hamstrung by civilians and kept from achieving "final victory," whatever the hell that was supposed to be. The fact that there wouldn't be an Islamic State had we not by our blundering allowed it to be born in Iraq will be drowned out by however it is that you say Dolchstosslegende in Arabic. It will be ugly. And it will be heard.