Iraq denial no longer an option

[ProSense]

The Iraq Primary

It's been Bush's problem. But as the 2008 presidential election looms, contenders in both parties are sorting out their Iraq positions. What they'd do, and who they listen to.



Key Issue: A U.S. soldier on patrol in Baghdad

By Jonathan Darman
Newsweek

Nov. 27, 2006 issue - For a moment, at least, John McCain and Hillary Clinton shared a common cause. It was one week after the midterm elections. They were back in the Senate, back in their seats on the Armed Services Committee, back to venting about Iraq. The target was Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command in the Mideast. McCain chafed at Abizaid's assertion that there were encouraging signs in the troubled conflict. Is "it encouraging," McCain wondered, "that people dressed in police uniforms are able to come in and kidnap 150 people and leave with them ... through checkpoints?" Clinton was also quick to pounce. "The situation in Iraq is not improving," she told Abizaid. "Hope is not a strategy."

Hope is no strategy: a lesson Clinton and other potential presidential candidates are quickly coming to learn. As the Bush presidency approaches its seventh year and the war continues, Iraq is no longer just George W. Bush's problem. Washington waits for a miracle pill from James Baker and Lee Hamilton's Iraq Study Group. But leaders in both parties know that a truly happy solution to the conflict is nowhere in sight—and may never be.

That could mean trouble for the 2008 front runners, Clinton and McCain. The Arizona senator stands apart from the political pack in calling for an increased U.S. presence in Iraq—arguing that the military should invest as many as 100,000 more troops on the ground to adequately secure the country. Clinton, meanwhile, has angered many in her party's antiwar wing by refusing to repudiate her initial vote to go to war—but has yet to fully articulate how exactly she would clean up the Iraq mess. Both senators were present at the conflict's creation and, if history is a guide, voters may well yearn for a fresh set of eyes to see it through to its conclusion. But, in the nascent presidential campaign, few would-be candidates have stepped forward with their own strategies for ending the war. Baker and Hamilton may offer contenders a road map to follow, but for now, candidates are still groping for a comfortable position on the way ahead in Iraq. A user's guide to the candidates' positions on the war, and who they talk to on the subject:

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Obama, Dems, & the War: the Numbers

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News flash, y'all: Most Iraqis now support attacks on American troops there. Most.

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Obama's so-called plan is to redeploy troops to Iraqi Kurdistan (demonstrating that he knows next to nothing about what is going on there, and how big a role Kurdish leaders are playing in the current occupation-catalyzed civil war). Obama wants to put more forces on the ground in another un-winnable war in Afghanistan. He refused, a la Bush, to give any timetable, and said that any withdrawal should be "gradual and substantial."

Gradual. Let's look at some other numbers.

C-4 explosive burns at 26,400 feet per second. Most of the stuff used to make bombs is close to that. The M-4 carbine used by US troops fires an M193 round, with a 55-grain bullet that has a muzzle velocity of 3,065 -feet per second. One of these projectiles passing through a human body, then, is making that passage in a time so short that it can't be measured with a stopwatch. The cavitation in the body caused by these high-velocity projectiles, stretching and shredding various tissues, happens in a millisecond. Nothing gradual about it. It's Armageddon in an instant... if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thinking about this sort of takes the warm, rosy, technocratic glow off of all that "gradual" talk.

So I'll make the same recommendation to Obama (and Hillary) that I have the Bush administration. Go get yourself an M-4, a MOLLE vest full of ammunition, and a K-Pot, take somebody's place who doesn't want to be there. Better yet, go live in an Iraqi family's home until the imperial adventure ends... no bodyguards, just live there.

In August 2003, the number of D-voters who said out-now on Iraq were 14%. If it's 33% today, does that tell anyone what it's likely to be by November 2008? Because the war is going to become more glaringly horrible as time passes, and public opinion will hit a tipping point. Shame about all those people who will be killed and maimed in the meantime, while politicians pretend they can have their cake and eat it too.

If we can't appeal to your humanity, can we appeal to your self-interest? Anyone... start now running on an out-of-Iraq-right-by-God-now position, and you'll be the next prez. A lot of us passed "gradual" a long time ago.

But What Will You Say One F.U. From Now?

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Shrub, his pooch ,and his hunter Friend, need to go the way of the rummy