Scheer: The More We Try, the Worse Iraq Gets

[dw]

Published April 6, 2004 in The Los Angeles Times

It is the beginning of the end for the United States in Iraq. No amount of glib optimism from Bush administration soothsayers can conceal that reality. Sure, the U.S. possesses the military might to hang on indefinitely, but only through the continuous sacrifice of lives in a reckless venture that never had an honestly stated purpose.

Now that thousands of rioting Shiites have been added to the persistent Sunni insurrection targeting the U.S.-led occupation, it is absurd to define the enemy as only foreigners or agents of the captured tyrant Saddam Hussein. The "coalition" forces are the foreigners, in fact, and the U.S.-financed quisling local government fools no one, regardless of the planned "handover" of power.

Under the false conceit that the adventure made sense as part of the fight against terror, the U.S. seized a country containing a major portion of the world's most valued and scarce resource. Yet our leaders expect the natives to believe that the corporate camp followers of the U.S. military are only swarming over their country for the purpose of humanitarian reconstruction.

Just how dumb do we think they are? After all, Iraqis know their own tortuous history. Theirs is a country patched together at the end of a gun barrel by previous colonizers. The common denominator of those imperial designs was the exploitation of oil rather than the desire to produce a harmonious, let alone democratic, society.

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[David Dunham]

1. Excellent article

[cliss]

2. Nice writing.

And of course, how true. I think the world at large is quickly running out of patience with this madcap adventure. It was only under duress and pressure in the extreme that countries reluctantly went along with this.

Most probably they knew that the US would exhaust itself, either financialy or manpower, within a year or so. With just some basic calculations, foreign analysts were probably able to calculate how much the whole thing would cost the US, and how long they would last.

Accounts receivable in the form of Oil revenue was factored in, and they probably saw that the revenue was not worth the astronomical costs involved.

Bad plan, after an hour of calculating. Too bad they didn't ask them.

[Old and In the Way]

3. The braintrust's 3 year planning to invade/occupy Iraq is impressive

in the magnitude of its sheer folly. Let's tally the balance sheet of the "adults in charge", to date:

- 600+ American soldiers, killed
- 5000(?) American soldiers, wounded
- 20,000 Iraqis (many innocents), dead or wounded.
- 1 International Reputation, gone


In return for this cost of lives and treasury,

+ 1 defanged old tyrant
+ price of oil is up 30%
+ taxpayer stiffed 2X the market price to deliver gas to the Iraqis.
++++++++++++++++ increase is in the number of new ME fighters that have been radicalized against our troops.

And to think these people thought that they could take over the world in their Plan for a New American Century. What they've done is assure the demise of this country about 95 years earlier than they planned.

[yelladawg]

4. It's war

We kill them or they kill us.