More YABL from the Bush Administration

04/13/2008

More YABL from the Bush Administration


Paul Munnis


Bush’s claims that Iraq is taking on more responsibility is yet another lie. People have become so accustomed to the President of the United States lying that they hardly notice it any more. Some on the Internet have coined a term for it: YABL: “Yet Another Bush Lie.”

Bush is standing up after al Maliki flubbed it at Basra and after 1,000 troops would not fight for Iraq and he is trying to tell us that the Iraqi’s are taking on more responsibility. This is the cabinet that cannot get a quorum for a vote and a government that has one of the leaders of the people who has walked out of the government and now commands a million man military force in opposition to the U.S. and in opposition to the Iraqi government too.

Bush has peace only because al Sadr is working to restrain those who would go back to war. General Petraeus has said: “Peace is fragile and tentative.” That is much more like the truth. Peace has also ended as March became the bloodiest month so far this year in Iraq with heavy casualties incurred by the U.S. military.

Americans want the Iraqi government to take on more of the war costs. In fact if they want U.S. troops to stay on in Iraq for much longer then they may have to hire our Army and pay for our presence with oil. We cannot afford to sustain these huge costs for much longer.

We should cut or losses and get out of Iraq. That is the first step in forcing Iraqi’s to reconcile. If we did that the Iraqi’s would have to decide if its civil war or rule by the strongest fist. Under those circumstances al Malki would fall and al Sadr would become the new boss-man. His million-man Army would become the Iraqi police force and pretty quick the nonsense would be over with. Bush would call that a disaster to his foreign policy (maybe the first true thing he will have said in years – NOT YABL) while others would say: “Thank God it’s over with.”

Bush is heartened now that the al Maliki government has started to negotiate oil contracts to get the crude oil into the market. American companies are well represented in the negotiations. It’s time for the American people to ask what it means if Shell, Exxon, and other major American oil companies get Iraqi oil contracts. The future is clear enough -- the U.S. Army will have to stay on to protect the oil fields meaning another huge deployment is required. It’s time to change that policy right now. If oil companies need to protect their holdings then they had better hire private armies to do so. It’s time to bring the American Army home and to stop the flood of dollars to Iraq. That is no lie.

Even as we are closing in on the election date that will end the war we need to start concentrating on a few major policies from Democrats. We need to build a DC power grid in the USA to carry alternative energy to far away places with minimal resistance and energy loss. For a full treatment of what we Democrats must do please read Robert F. Kennedy’s Vanity Fair piece entitled “The Next President’s First Task [A Manifesto].” You can read it by just clicking HERE.