The Surge Was A Failure And Here Is The Proof

John McCain and his Republican cheerleaders say the surge has worked in Baghdad. While our troops have done their best, the truth about the "peace" in Baghdad is much different from what George Bush tries to claim. This reporter went into Baghdad to see what life is really like in the city, and what he found is horrifying.

George Has Some Terrorizing Friends

I heard some time ago that George Bush wants terrorists dead or alive, but then again, he doesn't think too much of them anymore. Well not thinking about someone and being best buds are two very different things. Sattar Abu Risha isn't your average Irfaqi citizen, so maybe that was why our President sat down to meet him. Abu Risha heads the Anbar Salvation Council, a group that promotes civic participation his own quest to be a local warlord. So what would these two be meeting about you ask?

From Abu Aardvark:

....That's our guy. That's the pillar of America's Sunni strategy, and a key player in Fred Kagan's fantasy life.

And I didn't even mention the widely discussed, sensational rumor that he had skipped town with $75 million in American cash - which evidently wasn't true, or else was just a "misunderstanding" which has been "resolved", but does speak to endless circulation of unpleasant rumors about the guy's corruption and mercenary behavior. I wish I could have been there as Abu Risha nodded along sagely while Bush promised to funnel large-scale American economic development funds in Anbar, perhaps offering the services of his own highly professional office in seeing to the disbursement of the funds. It's kind of humiliating to watch an American President get rolled by a two bit, corrupt petty shaykh.

But that's not even the worst of it. According to one widely disseminated account of their meeting, Bush acted shocked when Abu Risha complained about Sunnis being killed in Baghdad because of their names, claiming he had never heard of such things. It's impossible to know the accuracy of this account, since it comes out of an Iraqi press not known for its fealty to professionalism or standards of evidence. But if true, what an astonishingly depressing admission of ignorance of one of the most important aspects of the Iraqi situation: he has never heard of the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad.

Highway robbery? Ethnic cleansing in Baghdad? Jiminy Crickets! Who woulda thunk it?

Winning Hearts And Minds Or Just Pocket Books?

Exporting democracy to the Middle East is hard work, as George Bush knows so well. It is important to win the hearts and minds of the locals so that they embrace our western way of life. In turn, they'll happily sell their oil and other natural resources at ridiculously low prices while throwing flowers at the feet of the oil executives at Shell, BP, Exxon-Mobil, etc.

Ok, now it is time to wake up from this delusion.

President Bush went to Anbar last week because he was in a safe remote location, far from the hellish streets of Baghdad, Basra, Fallujah, Mosul....I could go on and on. The reality of the situation with the Sunnis and Al-Qaeda is that for now, the U.S. is paying the former to fight the latter. The insurgents need money to finance their operations and if the United States is willing to bankroll them, then they are more than happy to go along.

Both sides win in the short term. The United States (i.e. George Bush's Administration) gets to look good for the commoners back home with reduced casualties in the region and the Sunnis aren't attacked from the skies and by U.S. backed operations. Meanwhile they get additional funding to fight the Shias (and the U.S.?) at a later date.

Sheer fucking brilliance.