I haven�t felt particularly compelled to express my feelings about Iraq in a while because frankly, there really isn�t much new to say. I didn�t watch the State of the Union speech because frankly, I knew Bush wasn�t going to say anything worth listening to. Bush has been a complete embarrassment to this country and has done more harm with his cowboy foreign policy than any other president in recent memory. He has never been serious about salvaging Iraq- only about salvaging what is left of his pride. He forms the Iraq Study Group to help come up with solutions to the mess he created, and when he doesn�t get the answer he wanted, simply shrugs off their suggestions and �stays the course�. I don�t care what the administration says, this is not a new strategy- call it surge, call it plus-up, whatever. It�s the same tired bullshit coming from Bush that we�ve had to endure for the past four years. This �new strategy� will simply raise troop levels to where they were back in 2004- when all of this started to fall apart. It didn�t work then, so why in the hell are we to believe it is going to work now? And my question is this: What is plan B? If this DOESN�T work, and most people with a frontal lobe agree it won�t, what next? The White House has never had a back up plan. There has never been a plan B. Even when plan A is left in tatters, Bush still refuses to acknowledge that things need to change. Just read what Cheney had to say when interviewed by Wolf Blitzer:

Cheney was asked to respond to some Republicans in Congress who "are now seriously questioning your credibility, because of the blunders and the failures."
To that, Cheney answered, "Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash." Cheney said the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein was the right move. "The world is much safer today because of it," Cheney said. "There have been three national elections in Iraq. There's a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed, his sons are dead, his government is gone. And the world is better off for it," he said. Had Hussein been allowed to remain at the helm of Iraq, "he would, at this point, be engaged in a nuclear arms race with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his blood enemy next door in Iran."

This is the same tired rationale we�ve been hearing since day one. The world is much safer without Hussein? Tell that to the Iraqi people- I�m pretty sure most of them at this point don�t buy it, and I KNOW people in this country don�t buy the WMD excuse we�ve been force-fed anymore, either. I guess Cheney didn�t get the �No WMD� memo.
This administration isn't serious about its responsibilities in Iraq, and nothing points this out more clearly than Plus Up, Surge- whatever the hell we're calling this thing. I think this has far less to do with making a serious effort to win, or even establish a peace, but is simply a crass effort to smear some of this on the next administration, no matter which unlucky bastards comprise it. If we leave Iraq before he's out of office, the whole of this sorry affair is his. He has no one to blame for his failures but himself. But if we �stay the course� long enough for somebody else to come in and, miracle of miracles, they pull something off, Bush will act as if he loosened the lid of the pickle jar that somebody else finally opened. If the next administration pulls out, Bush will have succeeded in wiping his sticky booger on them, and his sychophantic apologists will take delight in trying to smear the whole shit-smelling mess on those that followed and were actually intelligent enough to admit defeat.

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