| Subject: Cracks in Bush War Congressional Support |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 00:20:42 06/15/05 Wed
Cracks in Bush War Congressional Support Becoming Evident
Some Republicans Secretly Meeting About Bush Lies and Exit Strategy
Democrats Demand Explanation for Bush ’Fixing’ Intelligence
Occupation-related violence increases US and Iraqi Deaths
Time for Impeachment?
The last few weeks have not been good ones for the war effort. Despite being given every huge military budget he has requested by Congress, President Bush can no longer credibly claim to be winning the war. ABC News reported last week that an unnamed Defense Department official said the U.S. was no longer assured of victory. And Newsday’s Washington Bureau Chief reported that no major road was safe and Iraq was on the verge of civil war.
After two years of occupation the U.S. authorities have not even secured the short road from the airport to Baghdad!
Potential defeat as in a civil war is beginning to be talked about in the media, but soon the reality of possible endless quagmire will become so obvious that it will be unavoidable. And public support for the war - already slipping into minority status - is likely to sink further. Some Republican members of the U.S. Congress are privately meeting to discuss how Bush falsely led the nation to war and how to get out. A May 5 Gallup poll showed that only 41 percent of Americans believe the war was worthwhile, while 57 percent do not. When public opinion drops further, more members of Congress will see an exit strategy as essential to their political survival or whether the Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate.
With recently released official memos from Great Britain saying that the Bush Administration needed to "fix the intelligence" to support the war, 89 Democrat members of Congress have written the President for an explanation. Meeting minutes from July 23, 2002 labeled "secret and strictly personal ? U.K. eyes only," begin with the head of the British intelligence service, identified as "C," who just returned from Washington saying there had been a "perceptible shift in attitude. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy." How long can Congress ignore the crucial issue of impeachment -- accountability for the President who spoke so often of the need for people to be held responsible all through his 2000 presidential campaign?
At the end of April, even before the British documents were released, Gallup reported that 50% of all Americans now say the Bush administration "deliberately misled" Americans about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. "This is the highest percentage that Gallup has found on this measure since the question was first asked in late May 2003. At that time, 31% said the administration deliberately misled Americans" Frank Newport, editor in chief at Gallup, observed.
Spending on the war is out of control, replete with waste and corruption by corporate contractors. In the same week that the Senate approved $82 billion in more funding, a Senate Committee added $50 billion more war funding as part of the DoD appropriations bill. The cost to the U.S. treasury is becoming untenable as it is to the unmet necessities of our country and its people. It may be time to cut losses in what is a failing military effort against a guerilla resistance.
Even ’Operation Matador’ the overwhelming offensive on the Syrian border was a shocker for U.S. troops. News reports make the resistance sound like the heroes at the Alamo during the U.S. war with Mexico. Before their ’surprise’ attack, the soldiers were surprised when mortar shells landed a few yards from an armored vehicle filled with U.S. officers. Rather than the U.S. surprising the resistance, the resistance surprised the U.S.
But things only got worse. When marines advanced on Ubaydi, a town that had been seen as irrelevant, they were met with furious fire, including rocket propelled grenades and machine guns. The marines fought their way through town and reportedly approached a house with a locked door. Machine gun fire greeted them, fatally injuring one Marine and wounding another. A rocket propelled grenade coming through the door forced marines to retreat and leave their wounded comrades. After shooting two resistance fighters fleeing the house the marines carefully re-approached only to be sprayed by bullets coming through the concrete floor. Again, the marines were forced to retreat. They called in a tank that fired seven rounds into the house including bunker busting shells. Thinking no one could have survived; the marines approached again, machine gun fire opened on them. The marines called in an attack plane that dropped a pair of large bombs; according to The Washington Post, one missed the house and the other failed to explode. The next morning the marines were able to collapse the remaining walls on top of the resistance bunker. Finally, on the fifth approach, there was no return fire and the marines found two bodies hiding under the floor.
Troops being delayed because of the longer-than-expected battle in Ubaydi, along with pre-attack reconnaissance that was evidently observed by the resistance, reportedly allowed most of the insurgents to flee the area. The Sunday Times reports "American officers acknowledged that they may merely have succeeded in redistributing insurgents to other parts of the desert." The battle of Ubaydi was ’won,’ but surely the description of the fearless resistance fighters will live on to encourage others.
Newsday reports the U.S. continues to make mistakes - underestimating the resistance movement, sending Shia to patrol Sunni areas (described as "a recipe for disaster"), and assuming a new government would help when it has actually fueled Sunni anger. It is getting so bad that Newsday quotes Pat Lang, the former top Middle East intelligence official at the Pentagon, saying "the 140,000-plus U.S. troops in the country are mainly ’a nuisance’ factor in the insurgents’ overall goal of preventing the new government from consolidating."
The United States seems to be doing a better job recruiting people for the resistance than recruiting for the U.S. military. As CIA director, Porter Goss, noted in recent Senate testimony Iraq has become a recruiting ground for more terrorists - this may be a key reason for the growing problems the military is facing.
Indeed, there were multiple setbacks adding to the recruiting problems for the U.S. military as well. For the third straight month the Army missed its recruiting goal and is 16 percent behind where it hoped to be. Then, reports of improper recruiting methods required the Army to suspend recruiting by its 5,545 recruiters at 1,700 stations to counsel them for a day about what is permitted. There have been 480 allegations received by the Pentagon of recruiting misconduct since October 1. According to The Washington Post "The incidents included a Texas recruiter threatening a man with arrest if he did not show up at a recruiting station for an interview and Colorado recruiters telling a high school student how to get a phony diploma from a nonexistent school."
And, in two cases involving conscientious objectors the Army also faced setbacks. The investigation of Kevin Benderman was found to be biased by a military judge who ordered that it begin anew. And in the case of Pablo Paderas, not only did the military judge refuse to order jail time, but after the Army prosecutor cross-examined his expert witness, Marjorie Cohn, the judge said the government had "just proved that any service member would have reasonable cause to believe that the wars of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq were illegal" because they violated the UN Charter.
And, amidst all the going to war lies, the mistakes and failures, the costs in lives continue to mount. With the deaths of more than 450 Iraqis in two weeks and dozens of Americans in recent weeks, the war costs - human and financial - are moving toward a tipping point down the road.
"Mission Accomplished" said President Bush on May 1, 2003. Hardly.
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