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Title: As pressure for Iraq pull-out mounts, is Bush listening?
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Published: Aug 22, 2007
Author: Ed Gomez
Post Date: 2007-08-22 16:16:00 by tom007
Keywords: None
Views: 71
Comments: 5
As pressure for Iraq pull-out mounts, is Bush listening? Everybody's talking about George W. Bush, Jr.'s costly, aimless, tragically failed Iraq war. Everybody's talking about the fact that everybody's talking about it, too. AP Everybody except Bush himself, that is. Yesterday's lead editorial in the New York Times ("The Road Home"), a 1733-word shot of reason heard round the world calling for Team Bush to fold its blood-stained tent in Iraq and bring American troops home, made news overseas in its own right. Throughout the day yesterday, in its newscasts, Radio France International cited the American newspaper's editorial, whose opening line unequivocally advised: "It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit." That "stinging criticism," the United Arab Emirates' Gulf News notes, "came a day after the second deadliest bombing in Iraq in nearly four years killed 150 people. The new wave of violence continued...when a suicide attacker killed scores in a Sunni neighborhood in the western Anbar province, in what many Iraqi politicians and analysts said was a part of a plan to divide the country." The paper quotes Saleh Al Mutlaq, the head of the Sunni National Dialogue Front, who referred to Al-Qaeda and said: "I believe Al-Qaeda, whether intentionally or not, is working according to an agenda that is similar to the Iranian one, and the extreme right [in the U.S.]. This agenda is about dividing Iraq." Al Mutlaq suggested that the terrorist organization's goal is to make Iraq an Islamic state, a notion that the country's Shiites and Kurds would never accept. The U.A.E. newspaper adds: "However, Shiite columnist Halim Al Araji said in a statement to Gulf News that Al-Qaeda is 'the evil that everything is blamed upon,' and that plans for the division [of Iraq into separate ethnic-religious zones] 'were prepared long ago.'" Bush, at a recent Republican Party fund-raising event: All he wants, the self-styled Reuters Bush, at a recent Republican Party fund-raising event: All he wants, the self-styled "war president" says, is more time for his "surge" to work Germany's Der Spiegel, calling attention to the powerful New York Times editorial, also cited a separate news article in the same Sunday edition of the paper in which an unnamed White House official pessimistically admitted: "When you count up the votes that we've lost and the votes we're likely to lose over the next few weeks" - in Congress, in support of the Bush's war - "it looks pretty grim." Echoing that observation, the United Nations correspondent for Sri Lanka's Sunday Times Online reported that, now, the "Republican rats" are "leaving Bush's sinking ship." The New York-based reporter also noted: "With the death toll of U.S. soldiers exceeding 3500 by the end of last week and an astronomically rising number of Iraqi civilian deaths and casualties, the U.S. public has largely concluded that the Iraq war is a monumental disaster both for the Americans and the Iraqis." Lebanon's Daily Star also cited the New York Times' editorial - but not entirely with praise. It also hinted that the strongly worded call for an end to the war missed an essential point. "Yes, Bush has failed in Iraq," the Daily Star's own editorial declared, adding, "[B]ut why did he invade in the first place?" Its editorial stated: "Two years after the editorial staff of the New York Times published a mea culpa expressing regret for failing to be more rigorous in its reporting in the run-up to the...war..., the influential paper has now finally called for the United States to withdraw....Although this admission represents an admirable attempt to be more honest, the Times and other American media outlets continue to avoid one critical question: What is Bush's cause?" Residents cleaned up after a car bomb that reportedly killed six people in Baghdad this past Saturday Mohammed Ameen/Reuters Residents cleaned up after a car bomb that reportedly killed six people in Baghdad this past Saturday The Lebanese paper offered an answer. It continued: "To the people of this region, Bush's cause has long been painfully evident: to gain control of Iraq's oil resources. Indeed, ever since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has been aggressively pressuring the Iraqi government to pass a new oil law, ostensibly to promote 'reconciliation' among the country's divided communities. In fact, Bush has made the passage of a new oil law one of his key 'benchmarks' for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government." The Daily Star concluded: "The Americans invaded Iraq on the basis of lies that Bush concocted about Al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction. Now that Bush has completely shattered the Iraqi nation, he wants to deprive the Iraqi people of one of the only means they have to repair it. The question now becomes: Is this a cause that the American people can support in good conscience?" Meanwhile, Bush's so-called surge plan in Iraq - a euphemism for a risky, Vietnam-style troop escalation - isn't working. The Washington Post reported yesterday: "Top administration officials are aware that the strategy's stated goal - using U.S. forces to create breathing space for Iraqi political reconciliation - will not be met by September...." Recognizing that the "surge" has been a failure and nothing to boast about, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has postponed a trip to Latin America "amid mounting criticism of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq." Gates was supposed to set off this week on a hand-shaking, back-slapping junket to meet and greet his counterparts in El Salvador, Colombia, Peru and Chile. However, right now, Gates has some urgent explaining to do instead. His trip has been "rescheduled so he can participate in policy meetings in advance of a report to Congress [on] July 15 on the results of...Bush's decision to add 30,000 troops" to Iraq to take part in the "surge." (Bloomberg) American soldiers, on patrol duty in Baghdad, Reuters American soldiers, on patrol duty in Baghdad, "surging" for Bush Gates may have recognized that his boss's war-making "strategy," such as it is, is in trouble, but so far, Bush seems to remain clueless or stubborn - or both - about the reality on the ground. A Bush administration source told the Washington Post: "The heart of darkness is the president....Nobody knows what he thinks, even the people who work for him."
Conietha Zapfe kissed the flag-draped coffin of her husband, an American soldier who was killed in Iraq, at his burial in Dry Ridge, Kentucky, last week 
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#1. To: tom007 (#0)
And today Bush compares a U.S. pullout from Iraq to the "tragedy" of the U.S. withdrawl from VN. The best thing that ever happened to VN was when Europe and the U.S. got the hell out and left them alone.
Hell no he won't go.
"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win." --Mahatma Gandhi
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡
Absolutely. How wrong can the east coast Institutes continue to be, yet we are all supposed to be such stupid goobers and believe what the corrupt pack continues to feed us. No accountability
"Satan / Cheney in "08"
He likes being war president, but he wasn't too interested in being war cannon fodder in 1968.
#2. To: tom007 (#0)
"It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit."
#3. To: tom007 (#0)
#4. To: Sodie Pop (#1)
e best thing that ever happened to VN was when Europe and the U.S. got the hell out and left them alone.
#5. To: tom007 (#0)
the self-styled "war president"
I've already said too much.
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