Bush finally admits Iraq is a new Vietnam

As we have seen over the last few years President Bush will say anything to maintain support for his failed Iraq policy.

As anyone who has followed his various statements about the "mission accomplished" in Iraq will realize that his latest nonsense comparing Iraq with Vietnam contradicts many of his and his Iraq groupies previous statements about that comparison. As the Democrats have wasted no time in pointing out.

As the failure of the invasion and occupation of Iraq becomes more and more obvious and a September deadline gets closer the administration rhetoric will get wilder and wilder.

However, despite the very real differences, there is a hidden truth in the comparison of the two most disastrous foreign policy adventures in U.S. history. When ideology trumps sanity in U.S. policy, disaster inevitably follows. Among the reasons for the invasion of Iraq, an obsession with overcoming the so-called "Vietnam syndrome" shaped the Bush administration policy (particularly on the part of the vice-presidential Dick and the "Neo-Cons") so that they would be free to shape the Middle East after their own image and avail themselves and their energy-policy partners (read: Anglo-American oil companies) of Middle Eastern oil.

What happened to Dennis Kucinich?

On Sunday, Jeff Zeleny & Mark Santoro wrote in the NYT:

"Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years."

For Zeleny and Santoro, the Democratic presidential candidates include Clinton, Edwards, Obama, Richardson and Biden. All except Richardson fall into the "leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years" category. Only Richardson, according to Zeleny and Santoro (and the New York Times) differs from the group. They quote Richardson saying to the annual Kos conference last week,

"I have a one-point plan to get out of Iraq: Get out! Get out!".

The question arises: What happened to Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich? Are his views on this issue no longer of con sequence to the Times?

In 2006, he said:

"Hussein is in jail. Zarqawi is dead. Now we should leave Iraq.

"Zarqawi represented a small portion of a large and growing anti-American insurgency in Iraq, a sliver of the non-Baathist insurgency, while Baathists make up the majority of armed insurgents. So his killing is unlikely to end the violence in Iraq.

"Those who say we must prevail until victory are not themselves paying the price. Nearly 2,500 Americans are dead. Over 10,000 innocent Iraqis are dead. Our national honor is tainted by a false case for war, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Haditha. When will we understand that, as Michael Franti wrote, 'you can bomb the world to pieces but, you can't bomb the world to peace'."

In June, he told Tucker Carlson that "the U.S. needs to leave Iraq, the sooner, the better. But we can only do so with an international peace-keeping and security force replacing our troops. We have the money right now it's in the pipeline not only to bring the troops home but to carry out the plan I have been recommending for years now, which is embodied in HR 1234."

The question is, why did Zeleny and Santoro (and the N.Y. Times) leave Mr. Kucinich out of their article? It would seem that his position just doesn't fit their agenda. By blacking-out Mr. Kucinich and his ideas, The Times is narrowing the breadth of the Democratic debate and depriving its readers of a real choice in the upcoming primaries.

In a post to his blog several days ago, Dave Lindorf also asked "What's going on here?" He said:

"Apparently, given the Times’ famously inflated slogan 'All the News that’s Fit to Print,' news about Rep. Kucinich (D-OH), including about his carefully laid out plan to end the Iraq War and about his bill to impeach the vice president, are somehow not 'fit' to print.

"The self-referential nature of Times reporting would be laughable if it were not so damaging to public knowledge and discourse and to the democratic process. It would also garner an F in any decent journalism class."

We all know that a truly democratic process requires an informed collective. The disappearance of certain ideas (and candidates) because they don't fit the Times editors and reporters preconceived categories is destructive to this process.

Rove to Republicans: "Don't worry kids, it was just a few bad apples in '06"

Guess what folks.

According to Bush's political guru Karl Rove the Republicans didn't lose Congress in'06 because of the war or Katrina or administration incompetence, but just because of a few bad apples. According to Robert Novak:

"Karl Rove, President Bush's political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party's defeat in the 2006 elections.

"Rove's clear advice to the candidates is to distance themselves from the culture of Washington. Specifically, Republican candidates are urged to make clear they have no connection with disgraced congressmen such as Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley. In effect, Rove was rebutting the complaint inside the party that Bush is responsible for Republican miseries by invading Iraq."

Could that be because Rove used the invasion of Iraq to get Bush elected in '04? And it isn't working this time around. They must be getting really worried that scared Republicans who have to run for re-election will abandon the administration on Iraq. So what we have to do is keep reminding people that it's the "Republican war" in Iraq.

Congressional Democrats capitulate and abandon the American people, the troops and the Iraqi people

I don't claim to understand why the Democrats have aligned themselves with Bush on Iraq. Except to realize once again that there is really only one corporate party.

On Nov. 9th - electorally victorious - the Democrats marched into Washington promising to respond to the voters and end the occupation of Iraq. Today they capitulated and proved that they couldn't stand up to Bush and agreed to continue to finance his immoral war. It's clear that they did not have the votes to overturn a Bush veto of a real bill that would end the occupation and bring the troops home. But that's not the point of the Nov. 8th election. The voters were demanding that the Democrats stand up and be counted. It seems that they can't.

Bush, as usual, has been playing politics with the troops. He vetoed (rejected) the bill to finance the occupation. And then blamed the Democrats for not supporting the troops. This is what magicians call misdirection. It's how they fool their audience. It seems that he fooled the Democratic leadership even if he couldn't distract the American people from their determination to end the occupation and bring the troops home.

Among the current Democratic candidates Joe Biden and John Edwards basically agree with Conn. Senator Christopher Dodd who said:

"Half-measures and equivocations are not going to change our course in Iraq,"
"If we are serious about ending the war, Congress must stand up to this president's failed policy now -- with clarity and conviction. ..."

As of this writing Sens. Clinton and Obama haven't said how they will vote. I guess they are waiting for word from the weatherman as to which way the political wind is blowing.