The Bush administration cannot state publicly its goal in Iraq, because the goal is to stay until the oil wells run dry or we no longer need the oil, whichever comes first. a sacrifice of a thousand American lives each year in order to achieve this goal is seen as necessary. This is the great unspoken. It's why we're there, and it's why, short of an insurgent candidate capturing the Democratic nomination for 08, we'll still be there five years from now.

When I, here suggest just throwing the keys to the flaming shithouse over our shoulder and leaving, the Progressive Guilt-Farmers call me a bloodthirsty maniac for not 'helping'. Ok but when anyone suggests anything else, you balk at that too. I really want to hear one concrete suggestion then. My vote is fold up the tents tomorrow and leave.

From the point of view of those behind the war, and thus the pro-war media elite, things are actually going pretty well over there. Yes, we can accurately point out that civil wars are taking place both in Afghanistan and Iraq, that our troops are getting killed and maimed daily, and that the "fruits of democracy" that were supposed to blossom by now in both countries are nowhere to be seen.

But to the authors of the War on the Middle East (which is what this is), those failures are minor compared to the major success of the War, which is the establishment of the network of military bases.

Back in the 1990s, the authors of the War revisited the post-cold war foreign policy -- the infamous PNAC document of 1998 was but one example of their output. The forsaw a future in which carbon-based energy sources dwindled and which the remaining sources would be concentrated primarily in the so-called "arc of instablity" from northeast Africa to Iran, and up northwards to southern Russia. The solution, as they saw it, was to occupy Iraq and then Iran (Afghanistan was an unplanned practice session). The fact that PNAC and related groups were dominated by energy industry execs and radical supporters of Israel certainly influenced their thinking.

These guys now have what they wanted -- a network of bases, and they are fast closing in on Iran (covert action has been underway for over a year now). They are virtually unopposed, except for the American people and their Democratic representatives. No wonder they consider war opponents their enemy -- we are the only force that can defeat their plan.

Unfortunately, they can't convince the American people of the soundness of their strategy because they were never honest about it up front. They sold this as a "war on terrorism", so now have to keep making the absurd arguments and factual distortions that we hear every day -- they have no choice.

But do understand, they aren't doing this because they refuse to admit they were mistaken -- they are doing this because they think that it would be a disaster for America to give up it's middle eastern occupied territories.

I think Rove, Cheney, and a handful of other very intelligent and very clever White House power-players have privately accepted the inevitability of disaster in Iraq, and now are demanding the same hope and commitment to that experiment simply to stave off total collapse until someone else (preferably a Democrat) is President.

If Bush cannot be a foreign policy revolutionary causing the unprecedented transformation of the Middle East into a Jeffersonian Eden, then he must be cast instead as a foreign policy revolutionary with a glorious vision that was betrayed by the weak-willed and destroyed by his successor. He will become a political martyr, a subject of crass historical revision even within his lifetime, a tragic hero suffering from the curse of possessing resolve and brilliance far superior to most others. When Iraq falls completely to pieces, his followers will only get louder in their indignation and hatred of Bush's "enemies."

As with all things to these fanatics, protection of the Leader's legacy and the rhetorical purity of his Cause is paramount and easily more important than actual accomplishment of the things he set out to do. That's why I say the one's truly calling the shots realize where Iraq is heading, and have shifted all their energies and efforts into delaying the inevitable in a fashion that best protects the legacy of their Leader and belief system.

There is just one minor disagreement I have. These are dual objectives. Military dominance globally and political dominance locally. It's never been an "either, or" propostion. Neutralization and elimination of the Democratic party (and the Nixonian wing of the Republican party) as a political force has always been their first objective going back to Goldwater's defeat in 1964 and the foundation of "movement conservatism" of the the early 1970s before Iraq was even on the radar. Whatever happens, regardless of causation and responsibility, they will politicize it and use it to beat down and weaken their political opponents at home.

of LBJ's council of "wise men" who kept advising him to incease troop levels because "victory" was just a few thousand more troops away. Then at one point, they figured out they were wrong and left old Lyndon holding a disastrous war policy with no end in sight.

I do think that saying all of this can be traced back to "the oil" is a bit facile. After the invasion, during the seat-of-the-pants efforts at creating some kind of provisional government and military force in Iraq, there was actually a significant feud within the administration over whether to nationalize or completely privatize Iraq's oil resources. There was no grand unifying theory on how to handle the oil situation, and it continues to remain a very complex question.

Thing is, with Saddam, a relatively stable dictator with solid control over his population and political structure, there was literally no possibility of our not continuing to have access to Iraq's oil, which is in Iraq's interest to sell, obviously.

If the argument is that we needed control and a presence there during the great weening of oil, the vast outpacing of supply by demand that many predict is accelerating now, one has to wonder why we would need to invade and occupy so far in advance, but also how turning Iraq into a parliamentary democracy could possibly result in our having any greater control over or access to Iraq's oil as the winnowing worsens.

I could go on, but there are simply far too many problems and inconsistencies with the unifying oil theory of why we're there. Oil obviously plays a tremendous role in the Administration's general desire to democratize the entire region and in turn undermine OPEC, etc., but the reasons also extend to Israel and the general primacy of the Mid-East and Central Asia in geostrategy and the realignment of global power in the post-Cold War era.