There are only two ways to look at this, I think.

[Joe for Clark]

According to the Iraqi gvmnt people, they don't have a future past year end without Baghdad being brought under control - I am sure they are right.

I don't think the GOP has a future past November if they don't do the same.

The "Phase I" campaign crud lasted two months and fell on its ass. Its "Phase II" now - the time factor is not so generous anymore. They barely have two months to meet the elections.

They brought a couple brigades more in place for this problem- that is a city the size of LA - and they brought 2 more brigades in place to deal with the prior failure - I'd laugh if that didn't hurt so much to me.

It is going to be a bad summer, whats left of it.

Joe

[pooja]

1. Iraq is just a humiliation. Tying 9/11 to Iraq was a jump to begin with.

Now, 3 yrs later after "Mission Accomplished", we are worse off than we began with.

I am certainly not one to say that Hussein was a great ruler, but we can clearly see why, now, that he was as brutal as he was. He ruled his people by fear. Odd, that seems to be the same way Bush Co. runs America. Time to topple down his statue and take America back.

[Joe for Clark]

4. All true.

Joe

[damntexdem]

2. Actually, isn't it about Phase XXIII?

After all, we've turned so many corners in Iraq that we're all dizzy and we've dug ourselves a hole by all that spinning in place.

[Joe for Clark]

5. I am not making this stuff up - they are calling this "Phase II"

I am sure dizzy, too.

Joe

[Kutjara]

3. It's the inevitable result of two phenomena:

(1) Civilian leadership with no earthly idea about the realities of military logistics;
(2) Military leadership without the spine to resist the delusional strategies of the civilian leadership.

BushCo seem to have distilled their compreshension of military operations exclusively from repeated viewings of Chuck Norris and Silvester Stallone movies. In Shrub's mind, any foreign military can be utterly destroyed in under two hours by a single American soldier armed with nothing but a greasepaint stick and a gun torn from the hull of a Huey helicopter. This explains the current state of utter confusion within the Administration. After all, we've sent tens of thousands of our super soldiers over to Iraq and Afghanistan, but they seem to be taking an enormous amount of time to do something that Tom Berringer could have cleared up in an afternoon.

It's this Cinemax School of Strategy approach that has also led us into the 'liquid explosive' binary-bomb fantasy of the past week. Anything that's happened in an action movie is obviously completely true, so we should always base major policy decisions on the scenarios Hollywood has so helpfully imagined for us.

Why don't we finish the war in Iraq by simply pulling out all our forces and sending Ahnold instead? Talk about killing two birds with one asshole.

[Joe for Clark]

6. That is funny -

BushCo seem to have distilled their compreshension of military operations exclusively from repeated viewings of Chuck Norris and Silvester Stallone movies.

Porbably true, too.

Joe