Scratchpad: Sun. 24 May 2009

Re: CSPAN's Washington Journal segment with Democratic Party-oriented commentator Bill Press and Matt Lewis of PoliticsDaily.com (a conservative blog) saying that The Surge worked.

If The Surge worked then why didn't Bush implement it sooner instead of deliberately prolonging the war for political and the economic benefit of the Military-Intelligence Apparatus?

The facts show that Iran was more responsible for stabilizing Iraq than Bush's so-called Surge (New Way Forward). Furthermore, the ethnic cleansing resulting from the Sunni-Shia civil war stabilized the situation even before the Surge strategy.

Also, exhaustion had set in. Tens of thousands of Iraqi dead and seeking refuge outside the country also were contributing factors.

That the Surge worked is pure Republican propaganda depending on the ignorance of the audience--as usual.

You didn't need invasion and occupation to get rid of Saddam. You needed it to get in on the oil contracts on the petroleum reserves. And to save Halliburton/Kellogg Brown & Root that was on the verge of bankruptcy until the Iraq War.

BTW -- There's still plenty of violence going on in Iraq. Until they've another strongman in power there that will continue. The U.S. getting in was a mistake--but not from the Bush-Cheney point of view. Getting out will help mitigate that mistake.

While rightwingers believe time will likely vindicate Bush's Neocon-influenced foreign policy, as it stands today the Bush-Cheney foreign policy will be seen as the root cause contributing to the decline of the U.S. as a hegemonic imperialist power.

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