Bush admin September spin games

Nine months ago the Bush administration installed Gen. Petreaus as the new, improved Commander of the troops in Iraq with a new, improved tactic for 'winning' the Iraqi occupation. Even then it was recognized by every rational commenter that there could not be a military solution to the problems in Iraq. At best the military could help to create conditions that allowed the Iraqi politicians to create a stable and peaceful nation. It was just going to take nine months, and in September Gen. Petreaus was going to announce the successful operations he had conducted in Iraq. That is next month.

The first thing we learn about the report Gen. Petreaus' was to make is that he won't be writing it. It "is actually going to be written by the White House, with "input" from "officials throughout government."

Apparently that doesn't provide enough control for Bush, Cheney and Rice. Now we hear the next modification of the promised "Petreaus Report.. He won't be giving it himself.

"...the White House is pushing to have the general's increasingly nominal report delivered by Condi Rice and Bob Gates, with Petraeus relegated to a "private congressional briefing"

Jesus! How bad is the situation in Iraq really? Let's look at what current reports say.

Last fall the U.S. looked to military solutions over diplomatic ones. Facing an Iraq with increasing violence and an American military in which the ability to find more troops to send or resend and a lack of equipment to provide them with, the surge was a promise that if we robbed Peter early and refused to pay Paul on time we could send enough troops with better counterinsurgency training and tactics to temporarily dampen the violence in Iraq.

But dampening the violence wasn't going to win the Iraqi Occupation. Even if it worked, it couldn't last. We don't have the troops to keep the increased numbers in country for long.

The 'Surge' was supposed to take the pressure off the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government long enough for them to reach out and convince the Sunnis, Kurds, and other minorities to work with the government to bring Peace to a newly unified Iraq. Key to that effort was to be making the Sunnis and the Kurds feel they had a stake in the new Iraqi government, in part by:

• setting up an agreement that the profits from the Iraqi oil wells would be shared equally with all Iraqis regardless of Sect;
  
• creation of an effective Iraqi police corps and military forces; and
  
• disarming and disbanding the many sectarian militias which, under cover of the very high general level of violence, were carrying out ethnic cleansing of various neighborhoods of Baghdad and other towns.

There has been no progress in any of those efforts. Rather than creating an effective Iraqi government with an Iraqi police and military, the militias have become more powerful and various members of the government have been using both militias and portions of the government troops to fight each other.

There has been some reduction in the violence in Baghdad in recent months, but this is as likely to be a result of the success by the sectarian militias in ethnic cleansing of the Baghdad neighborhoods as it is of any improved effectiveness by U.S. troops. The outside groups fighting a proxy war in Iraq and the inside groups who think they are losing if Peace breaks out are moving the violence out of Baghdad to where targets are less well protected. The U.S. has 160,000 troops in Iraq as well as God knows how many contractors and mercenaries, and they cannot stop the violence with military power. There is no military solution to the Iraq occupation. There has to be a political solution similar to the one that finally ended the terrorism in Northern Ireland.

The reduction in violence in Baghdad has done nothing to facilitate political solutions by the Iraqi government. Instead the members of the Iraqi Parliament threw up their hands and adjourned for the month of August. Most of the members of Parliament are enjoying their vacation in the relative peace of Amman Jordan.

Another set of problems revolve around groups in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia which are actively working to use proxies in Iraq to fight wars for them. Those groups have an invested interest is preventing a successful Iraqi government from coming into being. Any attempted to find a solution which does not have active support of the governments of those nations will be sabotaged in order to permit those proxy wars to continue. The refusal of the Bush administration to even talk to the governments of Iran and Syria prevents any efforts to stop problems out of those nations. Cheneyesque threats against those countries cause them to oppose American efforts in general. They do nothing to get the required cooperation of those governments in suppressing groups who are working out of Iranian and Syrian territory to fight their proxy wars. So the Bush administration refuses to even try diplomacy.

Since the Bush administration has never demonstrated any capacity for diplomacy, that is not surprising. What is surprising is that they have been so diplomatically inept that they have been unable to get the ostensibly friendly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to clamp down on support provided by individual Saudis to Sunni insurgents and extremist groups like al Qaeda or al Qaeda in Iraq.

Needless to say, the 'Surge' has not succeeded in bringing the violence in Iraq down, and rather than making political progress, the political situation in Iraq is in fact worse than it was at the end of 2006.

Now we are one month short of the much publicized report that Gen. Petreaus was to have given Congress on the progress of the 'Surge' and its related shift to counterinsurgency tactics. As explained above, there is little to indicate that any progress has been made in creating a more stable Iraq. So what will the Bush administration do?

Spin! Spin! Spin!!