This post, written by Howie Klein, originally appeared on Down With Tyranny!
George Bush has had a problem with his generals. Too many are nonpartisan professionals who are focussed on military problems, not on electing Republicans to office. When Bush has felt generals were not team players-- the kind of players the Roves and the Doans and the Gonzaleses and the Goodlings consider part of "the team"-- he just gets rid of them and stifles dissent to the harebrained and disastrous policies based on his narrow partisan agenda can look like they're wrapped in the red, white and blue associated with the military. Many of us were astounded when the Bush Regime abruptly fired Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who told Congress just weeks before the 2003 invasion that several hundred thousand US troops would be necessary to secure Iraq after the invasion. That wasn't the answer the Regime wanted and that was the end of Shinseki's honorable career serving our country in ways slimy partisan hacks like Cheney and Bush never thought about. Bu humiliating General Shinseki they shot a warning salvo towards other military professionals. It worked to a great extend, but not completely and many officers have continued to warn us of the gross incompetence, if not criminal malevolence of the Bush Regime.
Eventually Bush has managed to Bush out all the honest men and has now peopled the military with Republican yes-men and utter hacks, particularly David Petraeus who the far right is already touting as a potential GOP electoral candidate for something or other.
So while everyone except partisan GOP propagandists is reporting that there has been an increase in deadly violence since Bush's and Petraeus' ill-conceived escalation (or "surge"), the political general calmly declares that the surge is working, causing a sane person to wonder who, exactly, Petraeus is working for.
George Bush has had a problem with his generals. Too many are nonpartisan professionals who are focussed on military problems, not on electing Republicans to office. When Bush has felt generals were not team players-- the kind of players the Roves and the Doans and the Gonzaleses and the Goodlings consider part of "the team"-- he just gets rid of them and stifles dissent to the harebrained and disastrous policies based on his narrow partisan agenda can look like they're wrapped in the red, white and blue associated with the military. Many of us were astounded when the Bush Regime abruptly fired Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who told Congress just weeks before the 2003 invasion that several hundred thousand US troops would be necessary to secure Iraq after the invasion. That wasn't the answer the Regime wanted and that was the end of Shinseki's honorable career serving our country in ways slimy partisan hacks like Cheney and Bush never thought about. Bu humiliating General Shinseki they shot a warning salvo towards other military professionals. It worked to a great extend, but not completely and many officers have continued to warn us of the gross incompetence, if not criminal malevolence of the Bush Regime.
Eventually Bush has managed to Bush out all the honest men and has now peopled the military with Republican yes-men and utter hacks, particularly David Petraeus who the far right is already touting as a potential GOP electoral candidate for something or other.
So while everyone except partisan GOP propagandists is reporting that there has been an increase in deadly violence since Bush's and Petraeus' ill-conceived escalation (or "surge"), the political general calmly declares that the surge is working, causing a sane person to wonder who, exactly, Petraeus is working for.
Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.
The report-- the first comprehensive statistical overview of the new U.S. military strategy in Iraq-- coincided with renewed fears of sectarian violence after the bombing yesterday of the same Shiite shrine north of Baghdad that was attacked in February 2006, unleashing a spiral of retaliatory bloodshed. Iraq's government imposed an immediate curfew in Baghdad yesterday to prevent an outbreak of revenge killings.