Iraq: Mixing Oil & Blood -- Part 3/3

The General Lies

We've heard it before - more troops will win the war

By Robert Scheer

09/14/07 "Creators Syndicate" -- 09/12/07 -- OF COURSE, Gen. David Petraeus predicts success in the Iraq war. What wonders couldn't generals achieve with more troops and more time? The battle is always going well until it is lost, and then they blame defeat on the politicians and the public.

There's no shortage of retired generals who will tell you we could have won in Vietnam, if only we had sent more troops, or bombed the dikes in the North, or been willing to kill more than the 3.4 million Vietnamese who died along with 59,000 American soldiers. Instead, the politicians and public, led by that bleeding heart President Richard Nixon, lost the will to win. Thus, the dominos fell to communism, and Red China and Red Vietnam now rule the world by dint of military force. Have you been to Wal-Mart lately? The triumph of communism is total.

Once again, we have a general repeatedly promising to save Western civilization by turning the corner in yet another intractable and unnecessary foreign war. Back on Sept. 26, 2004, in the weeks before the midterm congressional elections, Petraeus took to the op-ed page of the Washington Post to make sure the voters didn't vote wrong. Despite appearances, he claimed the war in Iraq was going very well: "I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up," Petraeus wrote. "The institutions that oversee them are being re-established from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously ... there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security, something they are keen to do."

So keen, it makes one's heart swell. So keen that three years later, after the expenditure of $450 billion more in taxpayer funds, and more U.S. troops in proportion to the Iraqi population than, at the height of the Vietnam War, we had in Vietnam, the good general now insists it would be disastrous to even think about bringing any American troops home before next summer. That's at least another $150 billion and many more Iraqi and U.S. lives wasted. But wait - Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, also testified before Congress this week with Petraeus, and he has more good news about what he still celebrates as the "liberation of Iraq." Remember that Bush administration promise that the oil-rich Iraqis would pick up the check for the cost of their liberation? Well, Crocker is bullish on that front: the Iraqi economy is on schedule to grow by 6 percent, according to his testimony. Perhaps he is referring to the additional money dumped into Iraq's economy by American taxpayers chipping in for the surge.



http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18385.htm

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• War
• Iraq
• Vietnam
• 9/11
• Empire
• Terrorism
• Imperialist

[boscoesarmy]

A lot of talk about oil..I thought the War was about democracy freedom and WMD's and there was me thinking it could'nt possilbly be about the oil.

[MrIraq1]

fuck your mother Iraq is the first country in the world you mother fucker and learn english u fuck

[HLMSR]

Death to imperialists!

[TheShield04]

who cares if iraq brakes up, if they want to.....it's just another fake country made by the british...just like "yugoslavia"

[MasrawyPasha]

what a douche that British guy is at 1:22 "hydrocarbons law" instead of oil law, and before that "UN mandate" instead of occupation--why cant people see through this BS by those people, problem is they did the whole change the name thing before, and it worked!