Lets believe the Aussie Commander -he paints a prettier picture than the reality..............
Thursday, 9, March, 2006 (08, Safar, 1427)
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Editorial: Spiraling Into Civil War 9 March 2006
WHEN President’s Bush’s handpicked ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad echoes the view of two top US generals, that Iraq is spiraling downward into civil war, people ought to be taking notice. Yet the greater the mess that accrues from America’s ignorant intervention in Iraq, the greater seems to be the state of denial into which the Bush administration back in Washington sinks.
No sooner had Khalilzad told the LA Times the US invasion had opened a Pandora’s box than US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was vowing the violence was nowhere near as bad as the international media were pretending. What alternative universe is Rumsfeld inhabiting that he can so easily dismiss the views of fellow neocons, who once they have encountered the appalling reality on the ground in Iraq, have been forced to abandon the cherished belief that America’s invasion still stands on the threshold of triumph?
Alarmingly, this does not seem to be the end to the blindness of this learn-nothing, forget-everything US administration. With America already eager to square up to Iran over its nuclear program, Rumsfeld chose this moment to open a fresh front by warning Iran that its interference in Iraq will be something it would “look back on as having been an error of judgment”. This coming from one of the main architects of Washington’s own tragic and benighted interference in Iraq is quite breathtaking in its sheer cheek.
It is also very, very frightening, because it demonstrates as clearly as hardly anything else could, that the Bush White House, even when its own men on the ground are trying to brief it, actually has no concept whatsoever of the immensely dangerous tensions that it has released in the Middle East.
The only thing that Washington seems capable of doing is toughing it out and for good measure issuing more threats to those still on the edge of the conflict. By the look of it, the Bush White House seems prepared to stay the course, right down to the very last drop of Iraqi blood. But with every passing day of violence, the chances of accord among Iraq’s increasingly polarized political factions recedes. The recent bright vision of unity and prosperity is dying the death of a thousand cuts. Though everyone, regardless of faction, knows the terrible consequences of this slide into chaos, no one seems capable of arresting it.
We are left now with a tragic truth. By invading Iraq and opening up his phony front against international terror, President Bush has actually turned the country into a turkey-shoot for Al-Qaeda and the men of violence. As it loses ground to the insurgents, the US military is ever less relevant save as targets for roadside bombs. Bush’s defeat is now being paid for in Iraqi lives.
If the lights do start burning late into the night in the Oval Office, it is unlikely to be over any reversal of US policy, unless of course that reversal is to bring the boys back home because Iraqis have proved themselves to be “ungovernable”.
