Surge to Nowhere: Don't buy the hawks' hype (great analysis)

[Faygo Kid]

Hard to believe the Washington Times - er, I mean Post - allowed a dissenting voice to get into their Outlook section about the war (don't worry, the op-ed pages are loaded with pro-war junk).

This is excellent, and important to those who want to refute their pro-war "friends" about the surge hype:

Surge to Nowhere
Don't buy the hawks' hype. The war may be off the front pages, but Iraq is broken beyond repair, and we still own it.

By Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, January 20, 2008; B01

As the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom nears, the fabulists are again trying to weave their own version of the war. The latest myth is that the "surge" is working. . .

. . .As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstand ing, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that "Iraq is sovereign," that sovereignty remains a fiction.

A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina. Even today, Iraqi electrical generation meets barely half the daily national requirements. Baghdad households now receive power an average of 12 hours each day -- six hours fewer than when Saddam Hussein ruled. Oil production still has not returned to pre-invasion levels. Reports of widespread fraud, waste and sheer ineptitude in the administration of U.S. aid have become so commonplace that they barely last a news cycle. (Recall, for example, the 110,000 AK-47s, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets intended for Iraqi security forces that, according to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon cannot account for.) U.S. officials repeatedly complain, to little avail, about the paralyzing squabbling inside the Iraqi parliament and the rampant corruption within Iraqi ministries. If a primary function of government is to provide services, then the government of Iraq can hardly be said to exist. . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011802873.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[laststeamtrain]

1. No matter how you vote, Andrew J. Bacevich is one of those clear-eyed

people everyone should read.

He seems to know the shit from the shinola.

Recommended.

[I work for workers]

2. About the electricty:

Saddam powered Baghdad at the expense of the rest of the nation. The rationing ended with his rule. So far as I know, Iraq produces more power today then it did before the war. It has never produced enough to meet demand.

[ljm2002]

3. Oh please...

...even if true, after 5 years it is hardly relevant.

We've spend how many billions so far? And we could not increase production capacity to meet demand in 5 friggin' years? Just like we can't pay for body armor and Humvee armor -- but we sure manage to pay the fat cat cronies whenever they stick their hands out.

What it is, is a matter of priorities. And our priorities are money for the fat cats and control of the oil.

No wonder Iraqis hate us.