Warathon.

What was the big story about Iraq this week? I don't mean Harry Reid keeping some senators up all night. More than that, it was the degree to which the U.S. military is bursting at the seams over this stupid war. I'm certain many of you saw the video of Bob Gates sobbing over the death of the Marine they called "the lion of Fallujah", but how many have seen footage from the air war in Iraq? Show of hands... I thought not. That's because it's not being televised, just as the daily suffering of U.S. soldiers and ordinary Iraqis (now suffering at our hands non-stop since 1990) seldom makes it to our national news programs. As during the later years of the Vietnam War, the use of massive firepower is becoming a kind of consolational therapy for our political leaders and senior military commanders, as well as a sign of their increasing frustration over so persistent a policy failure as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Planners know that the clock is ticking on the Iraq project, and that they need to show "progress", "results", etc., and fast. So... bombs away.

Right now the focus is on September, when General Petraeus' report is due, but they're talking about this only because September isn't here yet. When September arrives, they will have moved the goal posts yet again. Preliminary work for this next extension is already being laid in the public sphere - just this morning I read a news item quoting someone high in the chain of command on how they will need at least until summer of 2008 to consolidate what "gains" they have made since the beginning of the "surge" strategy (i.e. temporarily displacing insurgents to other areas of Iraq) and perhaps another 2 years. At the current rate of attrition, that could mean another 700-1500 American lives and god knows how many Iraqis. Personally, I don't think Bob Gates has got that many crocodile tears in him. I can't imagine what American soldiers deployed in Iraq for their third tour of duty must think when they read stories like that. One wonders if they're reading Catch-22 at the same time. (One wonders if they would need to.)

Why, then, does Colonel Cathcart keep raising the number of missions? Well, obviously the administration did not invade Iraq just to quit it 5 short years later. (Fact is, they didn't invade Iraq at all; only their unfortunate charges.) It is an enormous geopolitical prize, if it can be tamed, and a long-term U.S. presence (invited by a compliant Iraqi regime, of course) is what U.S. decision makers want here, even if it costs another 700, 1,500, or 3,000 American lives. Now, they will always present it as a matter of completing the job that the fallen have started, but if that "job" (created by politicians, not soldiers) is illegitimate, immoral, and extremely ill-advised, then the sooner we quit, the better. By their logic, we will never leave Iraq... which is, of course, their intention. So the dying will continue, until we decide it's time for them to stop. Perhaps that time will only come when they start digging a little deeper to find live bodies to fill all those empty boots. Sooner or later, they will have to.

Looks like we're in for some pretty hard-sell recruiting, friends. We've got ourselves a keeper.

luv u,

jp