Without the backbone to stand up to President Bush's lies, Congress cannot hope to extricate our troops from this ill-conceived and badly managed war. So far, the only real winner has Haliburton and it's shareholders. Surely that was not part of the original plan? The best strategy is impeachment of BOTH Bush AND Cheney,thereby ending the war AND getting rid of Alberto Gonzales.

Just speculating, but imagine that there were a terrorist attack soon -- as Hillary Clinton was just calculating two days ago there might be:

"There are circumstances beyond our control, and I think I am better able to handle things I have no control over," she said. "It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," she said.

http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8R7O3580.html

Furthermore, imagine there were an attack and it turned out that Iran were somehow implicated, even indirectly. Then the whole situation would look different. We'd have our smoking casus belli, and the high troop level thanks to the Surge could look serendipitous.

So our democratic senators who are avoiding action might know something. (Hypothetically speaking of course.) Put yourself in their position; if you knew there were probably going to be an attack, and soon, then what would you do? Things would look different then.

You are correct about the Democratic Party -- that it will continue to support the war, as it always has. But the reason for this choice, which is also the reason for the republican support continues to elude most commentators --hence the endless cry of the 'stupidity' of the administration. They are not stupid, if you think they are doing things out of stupidity, you are stupid.

The american political system learned a long time ago that the best way to get and hold power was to set up 'enemies of the state', and then to promise to defeat them. They also learned from both the victory over the russians, and the drug war, that the worst thing that can happen to such a strategy is for it to work. The drug war is perfect because it breeds the enemies that are needed to maintain the drug war (more police yields higher profits yields more people enterring the business). Conversely the war on communism did not adequately breed communists. The War on Terror does adequately breed terrorists, or at least they are hoping it will. The purpose of attacking iran, just as with attacking iraq isn't to 'win', it isn't to 'establish democracy', it isn't to 'get al qaida'. It's to have a war. A war that will scare people, and provide cover for enforcement of obedience, provide knee jerk political support, provide cover for scaling back civil rights, a war that will assure a permanent republican majority. And the democrats only hope that last bit isnt' true. Don't believe it? Then why hasn't congress faced forward and aggressively pursued subpoenas, and enforcement of blatant contempt of congress? Cause they are running out the clock.

Many seem to feel that this view assumes a conspiracy of some kind, that 'no one would engage in this kind of thing'. Unfortunately, most of the actors in the situation, and maybe all, could be ignorant of how the dynamic works, just as most people are only now starting to see how the dynamic in iraq is a guaranteed loser for us no matter how much military we through at it. Nonetheless, because of the built in nature of people, human nature, the above dynamic will play out, whether the political class is accidentally turning it on, or deliberately turning it on. And too the argument that it's 'too conspiratorially' implicitly assumes that while Richard Nixon could easily observe, and emulate the effectiveness of Joe Mcarthy's red baiting, and the media could leave a record of commenting on the strategy pointing out it's basically machiavellian political goals, somehow the modern descendants of Richard Nixon, peeople like Dick Cheney, have some how, magically forgotten. Afterall the rest of us have. Or have we?

I’m glad you joined the discussion and offered your views without emotionally reacting to responders like Kitt who seems to need to vent from time to time. To look at why all the reasoning you have provided on the possibility of some military surge progress is pretty much useless, you have to look at the Shiite political goal from the time that daddy Bush wisely chose to not proceed to Baghdad for the reasons that Darth Cheney so eloquently stated on TV in 1994.

The Shiites and Iran plotted to con our idiot Neocons into invading Iraq and killing Saddam to gain total control of Iraq and reek vengeance on the Sunni because they did not have sufficient military power to do it themselves. After we did the deed for them, why in the world would anyone think that they would be for a unified, secular Iraq? All of the key Iraqi parliament and other players have ties to Iran. It is sheer folly, of which we have in abundance, to see any way out of this mess other than to accept a federalized partition even though it would be a hard pill for the neighbors to swallow. It is where we will end up in time if we want to prevent massive slaughter.

I see no chance for political progress when religious and tribal hatreds abound and where the enemy of my enemy is my enemy. It’s sad that we have to watch such a political farce play out in our government and the M$M and I fervently hope that the Iran doomsdayers are wrong although I thought invading Iraq was so stupid that it wouldn’t happen, so I may not be a good judge.

Thanks for the welcome. I agree with you for the most part. As I said in my last note, I understand why we are involved in building up Iraq's security sectors. Almost no state could survive without such sectors, and so restoring them would be a logical goal. However, since it appears -- as you rightly note -- that many parts of the Shi'a political bloc are intent on vengeance and formulating a Shi'a state, it seems that we are providing fuel for a future civil war/ethnic cleansing campaign by training a military that is the tool of Shi'a influences. I do not say that we can or should dictate to the Iraqis on this point, but I do say that we should stop enabling the actions of the Iraqi government in this matter. We should not continue training and improving the lethality of the Iraqi military and police unless we see clear structures in place to prevent those institutions from being used against minorities likes the Sunnis. We should begin a steady withdrawal, making clear to the Iraqi government that they must resolve their internal issues and come to some reconciliation, or they will reap the whirlwind, but we will not be used as tools of the Shi'a, honing their military as a militia proxy. As I said before, the longer we wait, the more confident the Shi'a bloc will be that they can use the security services as a weapon against minority groups. This must be avoided.

As to the partition idea, I understand why it is suggested, but I fear that it could be as bad, or worse, than withdrawing and doing nothing else. If a partition were made giving full autonomy or independence to the Kurds, it would be extremely likely that Turkey would go to war over Kurdistan. Turkey fears that its own Kurds (in the east of the country) would seek a separation from Turkey to join Kurdistan, and Turkey would not permit that. Additionally, Turkey's government and civil society would probably be radicalized by such events, and that could cost us not only a NATO member, but one of the few relatively moderate and cooperative regimes in the region. Moreover, it is quite possible that Syria, Saudi Arabia, and other neighbors might object violently to the creation of a separate Shi'a state; they would fear that such a state would become a client of Iran, moving Iranian power and influence to the borders of those states. If a partition was made under U.S. auspices, it would almost certainly further inflame regional tensions vis a vis America. A civil war could still result, as disputes over borders and resource allocation (and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of persons caught in the "wrong" partition) could fuel violence. If violence is inevitable, it is perhaps best to try to contain it internally (even if supported by outside proxies), in order to avoid a spillover into a regional war that could have utterly unpredictable, but certainly dire, consequences. Even when we invaded, I wondered how we would get past that difficulty, and I still don't see any sign that we have an answer. It may be that a partition is the only solution, but I think we should recognize that it would be a nasty business, possibly worse than letting a civil war burn itself out in Iraq (ghastly though that would be). What an utter quagmire it is in which we find ourselves.