Joseph Galloway: Continuing the Flight from Reality

[marmar]

from the Miami Herald, via CommonDreams:


Published on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 by the Miami Herald
Continuing the Flight from Reality
by Joseph L. Galloway

President Bush tonight will present the results of his painful monthlong examination of the options for continuing his mistaken adventure in Iraq, but there's little evidence that he's discovered any new way forward.
The word in the halls of the Pentagon and inside the Beltway is that The Decider will choose some sort of temporary bump in the numbers of American troops currently assigned to fight a war without end and without purpose.

Does anyone, including the president, really believe that an additional 10,000 or even 30,000 soldiers and Marines on top of the 140,000 now in Iraq are somehow going to make Baghdad more secure, or clean up the Sunni insurgents who control much of Anbar province?

This isn't a new way forward, nor is it a recipe for the victory that the desperate architect of an unnecessary and costly war seems to believe is waiting out there to rescue his legacy. It's no more than a continuation of Bush's urgent flight from reality.

The idea of so small a bump doesn't even meet the suggestions of the only two outside advisors who promoted the idea of a surge of as many as 50,000 additional U.S. troops for at least 18 months -- neoconservative think tanker Fred Kagan and retired Army Gen. Jack Keane. It doesn't come close to the 100,000 more troops that Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona -- who hopes to be his party's nominee for president in 2008 -- has advocated, nor does it satisfy the majority of Americans who no longer have any trust in Bush's conduct of the Iraq war or those like-minded voters who turned Congress over to the Democrats in the November mid-term elections.

What on Earth is this president thinking?

The word is that he'll go on national television and promote the idea of sacrifice for the national good and victory in Iraq as somehow crucial to the global war on terrorism. More of the White House line: Fight the terrorists over there rather than on the streets of New York and Washington. More of what the late Harry S. Truman would have called horse manure.

The U.S. military commanders who a month or so ago told Congress and the public that no more American troops were needed in Iraq -- that more Americans would in fact only take the pressure off the weak Iraqi government to make the necessary hard decisions -- are being replaced. ......(more)

The complete article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0110-24.htm

[Mrs. Ted Nancy]

1. Bush has already left reality.

Mr. Galloway says that Bush is continuing his urgent flight from reality. But I say he left reality many moons ago and is officially in "la la land" or "cuckoo bananas land".

What do you guys think?

Also, I don't think Harry Truman would have called Bush's debacle as horse manure. He most certainly would have said horse shit or something more profane.

[pberq]

2. Kick & Nominated