Do the Republicans really want to WIN in Iraq? Here's how.

The Bush administration and its fellow-travelers keep saying that the Press is not telling the full story, the good parts, of the war in Iraq. They tell us to forget the lies the Bush, Cheney and their followers told us to get us into the war in Iraq in the first place, and they complain that everyone is against winning there.

OK. I claim that Bush and the Republicans are the ones who don't want to win in Iraq.

OK. They blew it when they believed (and I think they really did believe) that we could "invade Iraq on the cheap" and expect that our superb military forces were so powerful that the entire Middle East would bow to our superior forces. These are conservatives. No ideas that have developed since WW I are true. No subnational forces can defeat the American national forces. Insurgency is not a significant modern problem.

Yep. They blew it. A subnational insurgency operation can effectively counter a national military operation if the national forces do not exceed the inurgents by at least ten to one, and if the national forces can't stop support for the insurgents from entering the area of combat (in this case, Iraq.)

But the Iraqi insurgency can be defeated. We need to move about half-a-million or more American troops into Iraq, and combine a massive physical rebuilding operation with a very strong stability operation. The need is to close the borders, move troops into every city in Iraq outside of Kurdistan for stability operations, sharply increase military government operations, and maintain a reserve to go after every car-bomber. The military government operations need to include a lot of translators and gather Intelligence on every Iraqi family in their area.

The results will be a sharp increase in American casualties, a sharp increase in the cost of the war, and intentions to keep that many troops in Iraq for the next decade or more. This cannot be done without a draft and a sharp increase in taxes. If we want to bring stability and democracy to Iraq, we cannot do it on the cheap.

We may also have to impose a Constitution on the Iraqis, and enforce it. This is what we did with Germany and Japan, and we still have troops in both nations.

Even then, there is no guarantee that we will create a new, peaceful Iraq. It may require even more troops and expense. Half a million is just a first, minimal guess.

If Bush and the Republicans won't do this, then they are merely playing political games with the American voters. What they are trying to do is cause a perpetual war that allows them to create an autocracy here in America. Nothing Bush says has any connection to reality in Iraq. The same seems to be true for McCain.

If success in Iraq really mattered, then Bush would be telling America to start sacrificing and to really put the pressure on. Heard that? I damned sure haven't.

Someone tell me when we start getting reality out of the Bush administration.