Cafferty on the "Surge"

I was one of those people who thought we needed more troops on the ground immediately after the invasion. Security and order were the most important things there and, it seems to me, the only possible option for success in Iraq. It is at least conceivable that immediate and thorough order, restoring jobs, electricty, etc., might have made the insurgency highly unwelcome and seen by the Iraqis as such.

But that ship has sailed long ago. Bush is caught in two dilemmas. One, he has never shown much ability to address his own mistakes and this one is unbelievably catastrophic. Two, he chose Dick Cheney as his VP and main policy advisor, and Cheney simply refuses to even consider the possibility that he might be wrong. For Cheney, the lesson of Watergate is to never back down.

I really don't understand Bush. As Jack Cafferty asks, how may Americans (and countless Iraqis, of course,) will have to die before Bush admits failure?

President Bush is expected to call for sending as many as 40,000 additional troops to Vietnam — I mean Iraq — next week. Escalating the war is now being called a surge. Stay the course has been relabeled. It's the new way forward. We did this in Vietnam, remember? The U.S. kept sending troops over there which only led to more people dying.

The same thing will happen in Iraq. The United States is now an occupying army providing over a civil war in Iraq. There is no way forward, just more death, injury in the squandering of our national Treasury. This country has its belly full of this failed operation in Iraq. Read any public opinion poll.

Is 3,006 deaths not enough? How many do you suppose it will take before President Bush's conscience begins to bother him — 5,000, 10,000, more? How many? Meanwhile, the White House continues to try to get you to think that this is something it's not. The word surge is being used to camouflage the administration plans to escalate the war in Iraq.