The excerpt below comes from a recent column written by Sydney Blumenthal, one of the previous administrations most honorable and truthful members.
You do not have to subscribe to Salon.com, so please read it for yourself. I have highlighted the most chilling paragraph below. Think about what this man is saying. Ask yourself... Does this sound like something President Bush would really do? I think the answer is a resounding yes.
If you think that President Bush has made you and this country safer, you are avoiding the facts. We are not safer, and the world is not safer. The U.S. President has done us all a huge disservice and you and me and our children will have to pick up the tab for a long time coming.
God Bless America (even if you don't believe in a God)
Dave
The "war is lost"
Military experts say they see no exit from the Iraq debacle -- and that the war is helping al-Qaida.
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By Sidney Blumenthal
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/09/16/iraq_war/index.html
Sept. 16, 2004 Â |Â "Bring them on!" President Bush challenged the early Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then 812 American soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Almost every day in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with bravado about how we are "winning" in Iraq. "Our strategy is succeeding," he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.
But according to the U.S. military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost.
...
After the killing of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, the U.S. Marines besieged the city for three weeks in April -- the watershed event for the insurgency. "I think the president ordered the attack on Fallujah," said Gen. Hoare. "I asked a three-star Marine general who gave the order to go to Fallujah and he wouldn't tell me. I came to the conclusion that the order came directly from the White House." Then, just as suddenly, the order was rescinded, and Islamist radicals gained control, using the city as a base, al-Qaida ("base" in Arabic) indeed.
....
"This is far graver than Vietnam," said Gen. Odom. "There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with a war that was not constructive for U.S. aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile and we're in much worse shape with our allies."
Terrill believes that any sustained U.S. military offensive against the no-go areas of the Sunni triangle "could become so controversial that members of the Iraqi government would feel compelled to resign." Thus an attempted military solution would destroy the slightest remaining political legitimacy. "If we leave and there's no civil war, that's a victory."
Gen. Hoare believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it -- after the election. The signs are all there." He compares any such planned attack with late Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad's razing of the rebel city of Hama. "You could flatten it," said Hoare. "U.S. military forces would prevail, casualties would be high, there would be inconclusive results with respect to the bad guys, their leadership would escape, and civilians would be caught in the middle. I hate that phrase 'collateral damage.' And they talked about dancing in the street, a beacon for democracy."
