Get ready for the beginning of America's retreat from Iraq. That's right, I said "retreat" --- the very word that George Bush used yesterday as he thumped his chest to the national convention of the American Legion meeting in St. Louis. We are about to cut and run and try to save as much face as possible in order to prevent the coming utter meltdown in Iraq that is rapidly shaping up.
The signals have been coming from out of the Bush Administration for days now. Since the bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad, the daily loss of two or three American soldiers in Iraq, the ever-growing boldness of the Iraqi uprising and protests against U.S. occupation of the country, the Bush Administration has been in a near bunker mentality trying to find anyway out of the growing quagmire.
Indeed, this very weekend Republican Senators such as Kay Bailey Hutchinson, John McCain and Chuck Hagel began sounding off publicly that the Pentagon had better put as many as an additional 100,000 troops immediately into Iraq, not for the so-called "reconstruction" of that nation, but merely to protect our own soldiers who are increasingly finding themselves in harm's way. John McCain said that the U.S. might have as little time as only a few weeks left before the entire situation completely turns into a disaster.
Meanwhile, Colin Powell and the State Department have been working overtime in back channels at the United Nations in search of some compromise that would allow nations like France and Russia to enter Iraq under a U.N. mandate---even if it means surrendering Bush's "authority" over the region.
That's how bad the situation has become. That's how desperate the Bush Administration now is revealing themselves to be. Consider the following recent developments in the last 24 hours alone:
1. Today in Paris, in a stunning, direct contradiction to the White House's public positions that the U.S. has enough troops already in Iraq to maintain order and will under no circumstances relinquish any authority whatsoever to the U.N. or other nations in Iraq, the Pentagon's leading "adviser and architect of the U.S. war to topple Saddam Hussein said the United States had made mistakes in Iraq and that power should be handed over to the Iraqis as fast as possible." Listen to Perle's very words to Le Figaro: "Today, the answer is to hand over power to the Iraqis as soon as possible." Why is Richard Perle leaking this "trial balloon" to a foreign newspaper in France, of all places? Because the U.S. is in deep trouble in Iraq. Forget the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction and any rebuilding of the nation, a complete breakdown in order is now underway in Iraq. Our soldiers will soon be in the thick of dangerous urban warfare that the early critics of the war warned about.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=716&e=14&u=/nm/20030827/ts_nm/iraq_usa_perle_dc2. Less than one hour ago from this posting, the Associated Press reported, "the Bush administration is exploring the possibility of establishing a U.N.-endorsed multinational force in Iraq." The article goes on to say that "Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage acknowledged that the idea is one of many being weighed by the administration as it attempts to deal with continuing violence in that country almost four months after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations." Further, the A.P. reveals that "Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to New York last Thursday to issue an appeal for a new U.N. Security Council resolution that would reinforce U.N. support for the deployment of additional foreign forces in Iraq" but was confronted with "continuing resentment among many Security Council members about the U.S. decision in March to go to war in Iraq without U.N. endorsement. Since then, the administration has been trying out other ideas that would address U.S. concerns about continuing instability in Iraq without yielding to American insistence on retaining command over international forces in Iraq." Still, the French have insisted that "a genuinely international approach to Iraq with a sharing of authority is the best way to bring stability to Iraq and enable the country to move forward." Any wonder why Richard Perle is in Paris today raising the white flag?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030828/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_un&cid=542&ncid=7163. Just twenty-four hours ago, President Bush pledged that there would be "no retreat" in Iraq in a speech to US military veterans on at the national convention of the American Legion. Bush has now introduced the very word "retreat" just as his minions are seeking the fastest way out of the escalating hell in Iraq. What Bush is telling the American people that you are about to see his Administration reverse our entire posture and policy on Iraq and begin to retreat, but it will not be a "retreat" even though it looks and smells like it.
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=959d4e7737e7fc30Of course, this does not even address the billions upon billions of dollars in debt that the American taxpayers are being handed.
Naturally, this will be very hard for many neocons and the Republican hardcore base to swallow, but having the wrath of the American people is also a tough pill as well.
Look for the white flag to be raised within the next two weeks with a surrender of some U.S. authority to the U.N. and a redistribution of the oil contracts that Bush and Cheney had originally given to Bechtel and Halliburton. Of course, we will not dare call it a "white flag" when it happens, will we?
--David Zephyr, Claremont, California
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