In fact the American intervention in 1917 resulted in victory for the Allies by Nov 1918. The Germans had maintained a stalemate against the British and French and contemplated fres offensives since milliions of troops were freed up by the collapse of Russia in Nov 1917; with the Americans, beginning in March, 1917, providing hundrerds of thousands of fresh troops in the Western Front, the Germans had to give up about a year after the troops from America actually began to reach the front lines in France. That standoff,not the 1916 conflicts, is the true analogy to Iraq. American now is sending over a piddling couple of brigades, and already the military is making noises that they will be out by next summer. The US is whipped and a frantic President sacrifices 21,000 troops for nothing as they are far fewer than the number of forces needed to prevail in a counterinsurgency.

Bush dare not go for broke as Wilson did in WWI. Wilson staged various provocations tied to the Germans to incite US patriotic fervor and support for intervention in Europe.
Despite the Patriot and other internal security laws, Bush lacks Wilson's guts to round up thousands of war opponents and to jail or deport them. Of course today's motley "antiwar" community lacks the leadership equivalent to the Debs' and Goldmans' of the WWI eral. Yet even the well established US Socialist Party and widespread isolationists sentiment in both major parties failed to stop US intervnetion in WWI. The author here ignores the US intervention and the suppression of the US left triggered by WWI.

Moreover, if the US sent 150,000 troops to Iraq, instead of 21,000, a number more equivalent to what the US sent to Europe to blunt the German offensives after the collapse of Tsarist Russia, that increment might actually break the Sunni offensives and allow the Shia to drive out the Sunnis from Baghdad and key areas around the capital. Of course restrictions on atrocities committed against the Sunni population would have to be dropped, and a de facto "peace" with Iran arranged. (Like the deal cut by the "capitalists" with the Lenin regime in Russia). These are sophisticated maneovers however that the clumsy Bush-Rice foreign policy 'team" seems incapable of.

Also, not only is that "victory" of massive new US forces in Iraq a scenario politically unacceptable at the present time, but the military would have to begin a draft and the economy would tank in the absence of war taxes this "conservative" president, unlike Wilson and FDR, would eschew.

Bush's effort to fight a war on the cheap, like LBJ in Vietnam, has failed. There is no General Pershing today to save the day, and no Lusitania to fuel war fever. Of course if there were a major terrorist attack on the US instantly tied to Iran or Iraqi rebels, who knows?

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There are precedants galore that one would think this disgusting administration and the murderous little piece of shit at the top of it might have learned from history - especially with respect to Viet Nam. The troop surge of 1968 in the wake of the Tet offensove, for instance. It didn't make a damned bit of sense thirty-nine years ago and it makes even less sense now. But we should not be surprised that they learned not a thing from that awful period of American history. At the time they had, "other priorities", didn't they?

The parralells to World War On that the writer of this excellent piece puts forward are truly striking. It really is true: a people ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it.

I can't wait for tonight's State of the Union address the nation. It's always so much fun watching the First Fool look the American people in the eye )with a straight face, no less!) and say that the state on this once-great nation is good. What's even more side-splittin is the fact that one third of the people are actually stupid enough to believe it! As Don Imus would say, "You just can't make this stuff up"!

Pray for peace.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
"The Rant" by Tom Degan

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or how many troops we commit, or how much destruction we wreak.

American Intervention is said to have "won" WW1 and the same jingoistic bullshit is used to claim that WW2 was also a great American victory.

But millions of people lost their lives, America is beyond bankrupt, our nation is, at the behest of Our Leaders in all the named conflicts, now so far in debt that we will never be able to rise out of it.

And the battles being fought today are all directly linked to (but not actually started by, it was just one episode in centuries of such) WW1.

The Russians got tired of being owned by the Tsar, who was also a cousin of the King of England, the Kaiser of Germany, the Hapsburg Emperor of Austria, the King of Belgium, the Duke of Luxembourg, the King of Holland and quite a few other members of their inbred family sending "their" peasants off to die for " God and King!" Nobody won.

The war goes on, the bodies keep piling up, the debt keeps piling up.

Saying we are going to spend our way out of it is stupid rhetoric. Spend our lives our blood our money. Great empires have already fallen in this continual war.
Ours is just the latest nation to get that insane imperial wild hair up our ass.
Victory ain't happening. The American people are going to do what the Bolsheviks did, only worse. Red October is going to look like a delicate shade of pink by comparison.

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That it took a Sadamm to hold together a fractioned false state known as Iraq and then we go and remove him and the old sect's go back to what it was it took a dictator to hold together.
If ya go and beat a hornets nest, your going to get stung, granted the ones stinging die, but its a hell of a way to kill a nest.
Farmer Tim

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Judging by what Mr. Bush et al have done in the Middle East, it is clear, to me at least, that the plan has been to cause an unending excuse for occupation and war.

Facts:

The war was illegal.

The war was not planned for occupation.

Blatent lies were used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The occupaton is illegal.

The occupation is not planned to end.

Iraq has the second or third largest oil reserves unexploited in the world.

More facts are supportive, but not necessary to prove the method and scope of this criminal war/occupation.

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This "surge" would bring US troop strength in Iraq up to 150-155,000. We had that level in Iraq in Nov-Dec and Jan-Mar 2005 and the situation didn't seem to have been fixed at those times either. I suspect this is less about having an actual plan then about forestalling criticism by going through the motions of having one.

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Not that I am for this war in any sense.. because I truly am not. However I would like to note that I have seen first hand how angry these civilians in Iraq are.... They don't seem angry at all. Granted the insurgents are quite pissed off, but the civilians are far from that. My brother is a medic stationed just north of Iraq and the things he has shown me just prove that these people are out to get what we are all out to get... rights. The right to medical treatment, clean clothes, clean water, and a clean home. I would say it is very far fetched to claim that all Iraq civilians are angry with American soldier presence.

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Pink Floyd - Dogs Of War Lyrics
Dogs of war and men of hate
With no cause, we don't
discriminate
Discovery is to be disowned
Our currency
is flesh and bone
Hell opened up and put on sale
Gather 'round and haggle
For hard cash, we will lie
and deceive
Even our masters don't know the web we
weave

One world, it's a battleground
One
world, and we will smash it down
One world ... One
world

Invisible transfers, long distance calls,
Hollow laughter in marble halls
Steps have been taken, a
silent uproar
Has unleashed the dogs of war
You
can't stop what has begun
Signed, sealed, they deliver
oblivion
We all have a dark side, to say the least
And
dealing in death is the nature of the beast

One
world, it's a battleground
One world, and we will
smash it down
One world ... One world

The
dogs of war don't negotiate
The dogs of war won't
capitulate,
They will take and you will give,
And you
must die so that they may live
You can knock at any
door,
But wherever you go, you know they've been there
before
Well winners can lose and things can get strained
But whatever you change, you know the dogs remain.

One world, it's a battleground
One world, and we
will smash it down
One world ... One world

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Moreover, if the US sent 150,000 troops to Iraq, instead of 21,000, a number more equivalent to what the US sent to Europe to blunt the German offensives after the collapse of Tsarist Russia, that increment might actually break the Sunni offensives and allow the Shia to drive out the Sunnis from Baghdad and key areas around the capital.


I didn't know that the goal of this liberation was to drive the Sunnis out of Baghdad and replace them with Shias obeisant to the dictates of Sadr and the Iranian mullahs. You call that creating Democracy in the Middle East? No wonder it's not working.

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Remove all your money from the stock market.

Pay no more federal income tax.

The Treasury owns the printing presses, and they're printing money as fast as they can, 24/7. What sense does it make to give the federal government your hard-earned cash, when one press can print all you owe in a matter of seconds?

Google We The People.

Watch Aaron Russo's excellent film, "Freedom to Fascism."

Tell the PTB to "fuck off!"

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There is no connection between the Somme and what is going on now around Baghdad. First of all, it was a totally different era of warfare back then, one where lines were drawn and held by soldiers, and the fighting did not end until one side or the other was wiped from the field. It is doubtful that wars will ever be fought like that again, on such a massive scale. One side or the other would use a WMD before asking 10,000 troops to jump into a meat grinder...

Another thing to consider about the battle of the Somme is that it was more or less forced upon the British from a strategic point of view. Had they not attacked, the French line at Verdun would have been broken. But that's what allies do. They help each other out, on occasion. Of course, we wouldn't know anything about that now would we, Mr Bush?

The battle of the Somme was poorly coordinated and the soldiers were poorly trained compared to their german opponents, but the battle itself was strategically sound and necessary for the greater good of the entente. What Bush is doing now is not sound in any way.

If you really want to draw a parallel between WWI and Iraq, look at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, where the British introduced their "secret weapon", the tank, and it failed miserably. But it gave the germans plenty of ideas which, two decades later, led to blitzkrieg. That is kind of like what Bush is doing now...

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From the article:
"Sunnis and Shiites alike are driven to rage by the very presence of American soldiers walking Iraqi streets, barging into Iraqi homes, and arresting or killing people who may or may not be insurgents."

Let us not forget that a great many of these "soldiers" are, in fact, mercenaries, an estimated 100,000 of which, paid by our government, are augmenting our forces there. They answer to no one, other than to their employers, and are likely responsible for much of the hatred of Americans by Iraqis. This makes the escalation ("augmentation," according to our Secretary of Parsing, CONdoleezza Rice) even more pathetic in terms of having any real impact, because when the 100K mercenaries are added to the present total, the 22,000 additional troops amount to only NINE percent, not the reported 15 percent. (And here's a kicker, folks: if the "surge" doesn't work, allegedly there is an option to send in MORE troops!)

President No-Show, the Vietnam War service dodger, is simply tossing in 22,000 more soldiers as bomb-fodder, partly because the Saudis told him that the U.S. cannot leave, and partly to stall until the Iraq mess can be dropped into the lap of the next president. Willingly sacrificing lives for the sake of political survival is the epitome of murderous cynicism, and, in and of itself, should be grounds for impeachment.

This latest outrage, added to all the other outrages and violations of law by this administration, constitutes, in my opinion, the strongest case for impeachment of any in our history. The fact that it likely will not happen threatens the very foundations of our democracy and all that America stands for. I pray that if Congress does not have the will to proceed, a groundswell will rise from The People and the states to MAKE them do it. Otherwise, our future is very much in doubt.

(Of course, for anything to substantially change, Congress would have to impeach the whole "Gang of Four": Bush, Cheney, Rice and Gonzales – a formidible task apparently beyond the courage of our legislators.)

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This isn't even a war for crying out load, it is now, and always has been, an invasion by this country into another, for no reason. Using and abusing the military for an ego and greed, real smart. Our own country is in a shambles in many areas, our reputation with most of the world is shot, jobs are leaving this country, our health industry is terrible.........oh, just wait, it will all be fixed right up tonight, just you wait and see!

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it seems that modernity is failing in its war with pre-modern culture. With all the satellites, technological advances in killing, bombs, and fancy planes modern cultures can still not beat a backwards culture with its eyes set on some ideal far in the past. Goes to show that gadgets don't mean much, really, but will-to-fight and will-to-power still trumps all.

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... after the decimation of war.. and of epidemic flu. Where is our epidemic to bring about an end in Iraq????

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This evening, in his State of the Union address, President Bush will make the case for his plan to escalate the war in Iraq. He'll paint the potential costs of pulling out of Iraq in stark colors. But he won't say much about the real costs of staying in and escalating.
We should never forget the incalculable cost of the war — the lives and the limbs of U.S. soldiers. As of this month, more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers have died and 22,800 been wounded in this war. An estimated 35,000 Iraqi civilian lives were lost last year. A staggering percentage have been displaced from their homes. The U.S. casualties bring terrible grief to their families and friends, but the loss must sober and sadden us all.

In addition, this country pays very steep economic costs — what economists call "opportunity costs" — the costs of what is not done with the scarce financial resources we are devoting to war in Iraq. The price is particularly apparent as the president prepares to introduce a budget calling for cuts in child care, in education, in health care, and more.

Rep. John Murtha put out a document to remind people of the real domestic costs of staying in a war that costs nearly $9 billion a month, or $120 billion a year — not counting the interest costs, the costs of veterans' health care and pensions, etc.

The president cuts Medicare and Medicaid in his 2007 budget: $5 billion will be cut over five years from Medicaid — money that the country will spend in 2½ weeks in Iraq; $36 billion is slated for cuts in Medicare — or about what the president will spend in a little more than 4½ months in Iraq.

The cost of six hours in Iraq would pay for the cuts in the National Institutes of Health research budget, cuts that are occurring even as scientists are starting to leave the field because of funding shortages.

For the cost of every 1½ months in Iraq — about $15 billion — we could provide health insurance for one year for 9 million children who now go without. Children who go without adequate health care when they are young find it more difficult to learn, and are more likely to develop chronic illnesses. We are not only stealing from their promise, we are adding to our own future health care bills.

At the price of 12 hours in Iraq, the president's budget cuts off food packages for 400,000 elderly poor people from the supplemental food program.

For the cost of 2½ days in Iraq, we could help 463,000 low-income students attend college, by paying to reverse the Perkins Loan program reductions in Bush's '07 budget. Thirteen days would enable us to reverse the cuts in funding for over 40 education programs, ranging from support for drug-free schools, to federal support for technology centers.

Or think about major national imperatives. The Apollo Alliance has detailed a program for energy independence — $30 billion a year for 10 years would free us from our dependence on Persian Gulf oil, begin to address catastrophic climate change and generate 3 million jobs here at home.

We could pay for the whole agenda with what we've spent over the last two years in Iraq.

To make us more secure, five days in Iraq would pay for radiation detectors needed at all U.S. ports, rejected thus far due to cost. Two days would pay to make emergency radio systems interoperable — which still hasn't happened five years after Sept. 11.

So when the president calls for an escalation in Iraq, remember the price tag that he won't mention — in the lives and limbs of young men and women, in children without nutrition and health care, the elderly without food and heating aid, and security in our own neighborhoods. We are a wealthy nation, but we cannot squander what economists estimate may total up to $2 trillion on a misbegotten war abroad without paying the price here at home.

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Not to worry. It's all according to plans prepared by neocons for Israel and the US, the same neocons in charge of Bush. On the web: Securing the Realm (Israel) and Project for the New American Century. Check the authors. They are now directing US middle east activities just as the plans called for. All in the best interests of Israel.

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“For the Bush administration, of course, the excuse was September 11th. From a long string of insider revelations, we know that its top officials were hungry to invade Iraq…”

This is historical whitewash.

911 was no “excuse” it was a corporate pretext and national travesty. More important, it was a criminal cover-up for illegal war.

And criminal 911 cover-up is not “theory” or supposition. Blaming the government for 911 as an “inside job” would be theory but that’s not the case for 911 cover-up which has vast ramifications of its own for the nation and the world. Among these is an utterly false “war on terror” starring its grotesque poster child at Iraq War Incorporated with Iran War waiting in the wings.

911 remains a cover-up over 70% of Americans do not buy but it also shares something in common with WW I in connection to the U.S. And that is both conflicts were hatched by a rigged incident to incite a gullible American public to support the obscenity of war.

War at public cost for private greed cooked by robber baron oligarchs (who never left power even as they pretended to) is hardly new. Pearl Harbor and Viet Nam’s Tonkin Gulf were just 2 snake oil examples.

Trillions in Big Oil under the Mid East and Eurasia provided means, motive and opportunity for all that happened from before a “neocon” unanimously passed 1998 “Iraq Liberation Act” sprung for PNAC’s “New Pearl Harbor”…




“I TOLD SIR GRAY IF THIS WERE DONE, (GERMAN SINKING OF THE ENGLISH SHIP LUSITANIA) A FLAME OF INDIGNATION WOULD SWEEP AMERICA WHICH WOULD IN ITSELF CARRY US INTO WAR (WW I).”
COLONEL EDWARD M. HOUSE (as agent for the corporate money power and prime handler of President Woodrow Wilson. Colonel House speaks of his talk with British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Gray and King George for a planned sinking of the Lusitania by German U boats in order to instigate war with Germany by rousing the American people into a war whose chief aim was to guarantee billions in J.P. Morgan and Rothschild House global banking profits. Lusitania military escort ship, the Juno, was ordered to stand down and leave the Lusitania unprotected. The Lusitania, illegally loaded with military explosives was devastated. Over 1200 civilians were murdered in the planned Lusitania attack including 124 Americans. Quoted from Colonel House’s diary entry on the morning of the day of the sinking of the Lusitania. May 5, 1915)

“THE PRESSURE OF THIS APPROACHING CRISIS, I AM CERTAIN, HAS GONE BEYOND THE ABILITY OF THE MORGAN FINANCIAL AGENCY FOR THE BRITISH AND FRENCH GOVERNMENTS … THE ONLY WAY OF MAINTAINING OUR PRESENT PREEMINENT TRADE POSITION AND AVERTING A [FINANCIAL] PANIC IS BY DECLARING WAR ON GERMANY.”
WALTER PAGE (U.S. Ambassador to England reciting financial motives for WW I, Page became a trustee to Rockefeller’s U.S. “General Education Board” created to shape public and private education in America. Quote 1915)

“LET’S LOOK AT IT SIMPLY. THE MOST IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NORTH KOREA AND IRAQ IS THAT ECONOMICALLY, WE JUST HAD NO CHOICE IN [INVADING AND CONQUERING] IRAQ. THE COUNTRY SWIMS ON A SEA OF OIL.”
PAUL WOLFOWITZ (“neo-con” US Deputy Defense Secretary and chief architect of the Iraq War in effect admitting “war on terror” was fought over Big Oil factors. He gave this response to a question as to why the U.S. made war on Iraq and not North Korea, a country that is developing nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Quoted from a talk to an Asian security summit in Singapore 5/ 31/03)

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“I SAW PAPERS THAT SHOW THE U.S. KNEW AL-QAEDA WOULD ATTACK CITIES WITH AIRPLANES…I GAVE [THE 9-11 COMMISSION] DETAILS OF SPECIFIC INVESTIGATION FILES, THE SPECIFIC DATES, SPECIFIC TARGET INFORMATION, SPECIFIC MANAGERS IN CHARGE OF THE INVESTIGATION. THIS IS NOT HEARSAY. THESE ARE THINGS THAT ARE DOCUMENTED… THERE WAS GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE TIME-FRAME [FOR THE 9-11 ATTACKS], ABOUT METHODS TO BE USED...”
MRS. SIBEL EDMONDS (former top-level FBI translator who gave closed session testimony to the 9-11 Commission. Edmonds asserts that Bush/Cheney National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice’s claim that there was no such information was “an outrageous lie.” The Bush/Cheney administration has silenced Edmonds with a court gag order citing the arcane and rarely used “state secrets privilege” upheld against her by the Supreme Court. In an interview with the UK Independent in Washington 4/2/04)

“WE HAVE NO OPINION ON ARAB-ARAB CONFLICTS LIKE YOUR BORDER DISAGREEMENT WITH KUWAIT…WE HAVE MANY AMERICANS WHO WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE PRICE [OF OIL] GO ABOVE $25 BECAUSE THEY COME FROM OIL-PRODUCING STATES.”
APRIL GLASPIE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ (officially stating U.S. policy to Saddam Hussein and in effect, green lighting his Iraq takeover of Kuwait. Glaspie said these words 8 days before an American invasion & Gulf War when Saddam was betrayed by the Bush administration. As a Baath contract killer, Saddam Hussein was groomed to power from 1959 by CIA as well as British ops and supported thereafter. Quote from Baghdad, Iraq, July 25, 1990)

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Victory was never the idea.

Selling war machinery and armaments was and is.

I just hope the old man dies before he achieves his goal of world domination. The richest man in history, certainly, but, can he conquer the known world?

Not if we stop him.

Joe Craine

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"counterinsurgency drive in Baghdad, of exactly the type now being planned, actually increased civilian casualties."

Isn't that the plan? I've thought that was the bush administration's goal from the start. Why the hell else would negroponte be sent there? He got alot of practice with this type of stuff in central america.

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They could call an emergency session, declare him insane and have him hauled out of the White House in a straight jacket before noon today. IF THEY ACT FAST. He is a fucking dangerous lunatic, and needs the most radical action possible.
Bringing America to the brink of another civil war is not the action of a sane person. He and his henchmen have to get THE FUCK OUT and nothing less.

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