The Sick "Surge" for History

Yesterday, in a post titled "The Lie Before the Lie," I stated that President Bush has no intention of reducing troop levels in Iraq, regardless of what the meaningless "Petraeus Report" soon says. This is not to say that there won't be a token draw-down of troops -- say a few thousand -- just to garner Pavlovian favorable coverage in the press and to pacify already much-too-passive Democrats in Congress. Indeed, it is Bush's plan, formulated months and months ago and as he was telling us that he'd "base his further decisions on what General Petraeus had to say in September," to let the surge progress to the point that the next president -- whoever he or she may be -- will inherit it and his war.

Keith Olbermann discussed this on his Countdown show earlier this week in a "special comment."

And so he is back from his annual surprise gratuitous photo-op in Iraq, and what a sorry spectacle it was. But it was nothing compared to the spectacle of one unfiltered, unguarded, horrifying quotation in the new biography to which Mr. Bush has consented.

As he deceived the troops at Al-Asad Air Base yesterday with the tantalizing prospect that some of them might not have to risk being killed and might get to go home, Mr. Bush probably did not know that, with his own words, he had already proved that he had been lying, is lying and will be lying about Iraq.

He presumably did not know that there had already appeared those damning excerpts from Robert Draper's book “Dead Certain."

“I'm playing for October-November," Mr. Bush said to Draper. That, evidently, is the time during which, he thinks he can sell us the real plan, which is “to get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence."

Comfortable, that is, with saying about Iraq, again quoting the President, “stay... longer."

And there it is. We've caught you. Your goal is not to bring some troops home, maybe, if we let you have your way now. Your goal is not to set the stage for eventual withdrawal. You are, to use your own disrespectful, tone-deaf word, playing at getting the next Republican nominee to agree to jump into this bottomless pit with you, and take us with him, as we stay in Iraq for another year, and another, and another, and anon.

Everything you said about Iraq yesterday, and everything you will say, is a deception, for the purpose of this one cynical, unacceptable, brutal goal: perpetuating this war indefinitely.

[Bush's quotes come from his new biography by Robert Draper titled Dead Certain.]

I used the term "his war" above most specifically because it is now that which Bush fears. Only by "sharing" the war with the next administration, be it Republican or Democrat, can he hope to successfully rewrite history and share the blame for the quagmire in which we find ourselves. So intent is his worry that he is willing to sacrifice the lives of Americans and Iraqis alike. It is sickening, but it is sadly not surprising. Although the mouth of the Administration has always spoken platitudes regarding our military and its personnel, it has turned only deaf ears and blind eyes to their real needs, their true plight. Bush has broken our military. His policies have served only to kill our soldiers and place America further at risk. And now his only concern is perpetuating the war for its own sake, war without end. Or as I should say, war beyond January 2009.

To see Olbermann's entire, impassioned commentary, follow this link.

7 September 2007