April 8, 2008 by Dave Lindorff
"It gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran." --Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William Odom testimony in CongressAmericans will soon be deluged with effusive, praise-filled stories in what passes for news organizations, print and electronic, in the US, quoting Gen. David Petraeus on the glories of his and President Bush's brilliant so-called "surge" strategy in Iraq.
There will be little critical comment on his report, which will claim that the surge is working but that Iraqi's "need to do more" to take advantage of the surge in stability to create a stable government in Baghdad.
He will claim, and the media will help him here, that the collapse of President Nouri al-Maliki's "defining moment" attack on the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra, with 1000 of his crack troops and two leading officers defecting to the other side, and Maliki himself having to be rescued by American troops, was a minor event. He will claim that the rise in violence in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq back to pre-surge levels is of no significance - a statistical aberration.
And President Bush will ask for another $102 billion from Congress to continue funding his catastrophic war in Iraq."
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