Stay the course in Iraq? What course?

[RedEarth]

By Daniel Schorr

WASHINGTON
President Bush likes to say he will stay the course in Iraq. The question is: What course?

Is it the course that has so far cost some 2,700 American lives, 100 Iraqi lives a day, and an estimated expenditure of $300 billion so far?

Is it the course, which, according to a leaked consensus estimate of the US intelligence community, has made Iraq a primary recruitment vehicle for the next generation of violent extremists and weakened the global fight against terrorism?

The president has said that Iraq is the central battleground in the war against terrorism. But the intelligence agencies suggest that if this is so, it is only because the war has made it so.

Intelligence czar John Negroponte puts it delicately when he says that there have been some notable successes, but that there is still much to be done in the war against terrorism.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0929/p09s02-cods.htm

[Monkeyman]

1. Its Vietnam all over again

[Demeter]

5. It's Much, Much Worse Than Viet Nam

Viet Nam actually brought change and improvement around the world and at home as a reaction of the public to the crime, and reaction of the government to the public outrage.

Iraq is a cudgel which is used to destroy Iraq, the US, and anyone else that happens in the path. Public outrage is suppressed and punished, the government no longer responds to the public in any meaningful way except to strip us of our Constitutional rights.

[BrendaStarr]

7. And Iraq is a stepping stone to Iran.

Keep troop levels high?

Of course, it's Iran's Kuwait the staging ground.

Bring in more troops to help the poor Iraqi government stabilize their democracy.

Well, until the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rove regime decides it's time to empty Iraq to grab oil fields in Iran. (Some of Iran's largest sit right next to southern Iraq.) You think Rumsfeld doesn't have a cheap and easy plan to run in and slice off those rich fields? I guess that's why you can sleep at night.

I had a post on the Bushies and their intentions over Iran, but I forgot to insert the links to all I've been reading. So I will go do that before I start offering it up.

[yurbud]

2. There is a course: hold onto oil concession and put US oil companies in

a position to set the price by taking over "swing" producer Iraq.

[TheCowsCameHome]

3. Full speed into the wall, like crash test dummies.

Only crash test dummies are smarter.

[whistle]

4. The course of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on graft and

...corruption while murdering, torturing and maiming hundreds of thousands of human beings in the name of Christianity and fascistic imperalism...War is a Racket!

[katty]

6. Stay the course: Abyss up ahead