Humpty-Dumpty Bush

So the old song and dance continue as Mr Bush is asking for 8,ooo more troups above the 22,000 that he commited for the so-called recent surge. Also billions more in dollars, of course. Is he trying to do what cannot be done, put Humpty Dumpty back together again?

The war in Iraq isn't over yet, but - surge or no surge - the United States has already lost. That's the grim consensus of a panel of experts assembled by Rolling Stone to assess the future of Iraq. "Even if we had a million men to go in, it's too late now," says retired four-star Gen. Tony McPeak, who served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War. "Humpty Dumpty can't be put back together again."

Read Beyond Quagmire here



Surge and Destroy: The Brutality Escalates in Iraq
By Michael Schwartz

There is a larger pattern that should, by now, be clear in these developments, and all that have come before. The architects of American policy in the Middle East tend to keep escalating the level of brutality in search of a way to convince the Iraqis (and now the Iranians) that the only path that avoids indiscriminate slaughter is submission to a Pax Americana. Put another way, American policy in the Middle East has devolved into unadorned state terrorism.