Running Scared

The Liberal Patriot

Running Scared

J.G. Schwam - January 15, 2007

Bush policy makers are floundering. The spin machines are not convincing very many Americans that their policies are succeeding. With 58,000 jobs created toward the end of the third quarter at least 2 million Americans are still out of work, 6.4% of the work force, still the highest since Bill Clinton turned around George H.W. Bush’s failed economics nine years ago. More are unemployed if you consider the Department of Labors 444,000 so called marginally attached who haven’t told the DOL they’ve looked for work in the last four months.

The news media is slowly beginning to take a cynical tone in their reporting of the situation in Iraq. Each terrorist bombing or attack on US troops over the last several days there is worse than last. It’s darned hard to say things are going well these are isolated incidents, when just a fraction under half the amount of coalition soldiers have been killed in action in the first 12 days of November than during the first thirty one days of the war in March, 2003. The Bush administrations Iraq policy is failing. Iraq is descending into the Maelstrom and they know it.

The news media is not reporting casualties, only deaths. In October there were 433 soldiers wounded, only eleven were considered non-hostile. Since March 20^th 2298 soldiers have been wounded.

Iraqi provisional administrator Bremer was hastily summoned back to Washington upon the release of a “gloomy” CIA report. The implication, Bush wants out. Among the options being considered is appointing an interim Iraqi leadership and imposing a temporary constitution. The CIA report also warned US attempts to build a democracy in Iraq might collapse unless a different course of action was engaged. It concluded that none of the Iraqis on the US's largely ex-patriot Governing Council had shown any capability to govern.

Knight Ridder reported Mr Bremer "essentially endorsed the CIA's findings" during the Washington meetings. By this statement Bremer tacitly admits there are serious problems in Iraq.

The jihadists want the occupiers out. Bremer wants out. No one in their right mind wants the job of provisional governor of Iraq. Yesterday, Wednesday a truck bomb blast wounded 79 and killed at least 18 Italian soldiers in the supposedly quiet Shia Muslim city of Nasiriyah. For several days Insurgents have rocked downtown Baghdad’s “green zone”, the coalition’s headquarters area with harassing mortar fire.

Bush insisted Tuesday that "we're not only containing the terrorist threat, we're turning it back". Only days before General Richardo Sanchez yesterday conceded that the war was "getting worse". It is growing difficult to find for synonyms for hollow rhetoric to describe Bush’s denials that all is not well in Iraq.

U.S. warplanes have resumed bombing against targets in Fallujah, Tikrit and south of Baghdad targeting suspected strongholds of Saddam loyalists. This is a clear mistake. Nothing creates outright shock, fear and anger like death from above. As we should know by now this will only further anger and strengthen the resolve of fanatics that are willing to die in the name of their hatred for Bush and the US. But in their mad arrogance the Bush White House just cannot accept this fact.

Militarily the coalition has not been able to secure Iraq’s borders. Rumsfeld says they have, several Centcom briefings have blamed the suicide bombings on Al-Queda infiltrators that have crossed Iraqi borders. The fact is they either haven’t or don’t know.

The GOP’s Congress is so uncertain of itself and fractious that it has to resort voice votes to pass an appropriations bill to keep the war going. Hoping that by offering their uncertain members anonymity they’ll save face with their constituents if they don’t have own up to vote.

By cowardly actions like these it should be clear that the pro-war coalition in their own party is so weak that they had to offer some an off the record to garner enough votes to pass it. So frightened are they of exposing the public to any real floor debate on the war appropriations that they felt they must repress it by imposing martial law.

Dozens of newspaper editorial boards across the US are blasting Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Bremer. Bush or more likely Karl Rove wants out, there is an election coming up. The only problem is it won’t work. The descent into the maelstrom is underway, they have blown it.

All the spin in world on shaky if not altogether fuzzy economic upturns don’t matter. Some media is even questioning the veracity of the Department of Labor statistical reports under Secretary Elaine Chao. We are not better off than we were four years ago. We are worse.

The war is now the big issue and they are praying, just praying for economic rain. The Bushies are running scared.

Back to Liberal Patriot Main Page