Why Sen. Barack Obama says "the surge" didn't work ..

Despite protestations from Senator John McCain and others in the Bush administration who claim the reason for the reduced violence in Iraq is the so-called surge - the reported addition of 30,000 American troops in Iraq - Obama and many others, especially those living in Iraq, disagree.

The reason I say "reported" is because there is a question about the number of troops that were called back before an additional 30,000 soldiers were deployed or re-deployed or re-re-deployed to bring the number back to its original total.

At any rate, even if there actually were 30,000 additional troops sent to Iraq, at the time of the announced surge, Iraqis became completely fed up with all the violence and threats from Al-Qeda. So it was they who mustered the courage and clout to fight, deter and push Al-Qeda out of their villages.

A reporter on CNN's GPS today said the effect of more American troops was actually minimal. That the reduction of violence was won by Iraqis fired up with the need for self-determination because US forces had minimal impact against Al-Qeda guerrilla fighters. Iraqis had hoped for a more effective assistance and protection from US forces.

But in fact, it was not until US forces came to Iraq that Al-Qeda invaded the country, creating chaos, because Iraq's now deceased tyrannical dictator Saddam Hussein, would not allow them - or any theocratic groups or leaders - in "his" country because they would challenge him and he would not tolerate that.

The private army contracted by the Bush administration, Blackwater, has been blamed for creating more violence and killing more innocent citizens without any accountability (US military members committing crimes can be prosecuted).

Conservatively, more than two hundred thousand innocent Iraqis have been killed, according to independent international humanitarian organizations, since the US military crossed into Iraq more than five years ago.

The International Red Cross reports humanitarian crises in Iraq are as bad as they've continued to be over the past five years - access to sanitation, clean water and health care are all still desperately needed.

Mind you, Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, Haliburton, has benefited from hundreds of billions of tax and borrowed US dollars worth of contracted work to rebuild the nation. Unfortunately, much of what they've built has had to be re-built or re-re-rebuilt because the construction has been destroyed by war there.

In summary, according to those who are close with Iraqis, they themselves were responsible for significantly cutting back the violence with only minor input from US military forces; more, that the presence of the US military only inspires Al-Qeda to continue to push their way back in - so they want the US to leave.

Edited to add: Of course the reason for the surge to begin with was to lessen violence in order for Iraq's diverse (and warring) leaders to pound out political solutions to curb the civil war and other centuries-long feuds. As of today, little process has been made.

Supporters of the surge proudly point out that "some" political agreement has been made. But at what cost? There is a long, long way to go to put Iraq in the condition the Bush administration would like to see. Iraqi leaders no longer care what Bush wants. They want the US to leave.

As stated by so many Iraqis who survived the massive destruction of their nation - who have no home (millions have been displaced), no job (Haliburton shipped in cheap labor from Indonesia to rebuild the country), witnessed their history destroyed - irreplaceable artifacts decimated and stolen, their family and neighbors slaughtered, the list goes on: "This is liberation?"

Perhaps just as significantly, Iraqi leadership is close with Iran, providing an even greater impetus to ask the US military to leave - going as far as to ask the Americans for a specific plan and "timeline" (or whatever name it's called by whoever uses the term) to leave the nation.

On the other hand, those who are close with McCain, the US military and Bush administration insist that the US military was primarily responsible for the de-escalation of violence created by Al-Qeda and civil war in the nation.

In one sense, this is a story not only about Iraq and the Bush administration, it's about whom you believe to tell you the truth. If you think McCain is telling the truth, he's your guy. If you believe Obama has a better grasp of what really happened and is happening now, he's your man.

One way to discover all points of view and glean substantiated facts about these issues is to read newspapers from other nations (find them here or here) as well as international coverage -- what little there is -- in US news sources. There is also a plethora of books that are well documented surrounding the US action in Iraq.

Frienemies...

Here's the deal:

A large number of Iraq governmental pooh-bahs - the people for whom US military personnel have forfeited their lives, their able bodies, their lifestyles as they once knew them with their friends and families - are close pals with the folks in Iran whom President Bush proclaims are the *real* enemy.

It's no accident there is such Iranian influence in the nation that is supposed to be our "ally." It's been there since the getgo.

Only we haven't been told about it. Well, I should say that CNN is just recently starting to catch on to this story.

What does that mean?

It means that the Bush administration has known about this influence and *tolerated* it until now, when he is threatening to invade Iran unless they back off.

And what does *that* mean?

It means that Bush has what he considers the political clout to invade Iran.

Yes, really.

He claims Iran is doing horrible stuff in Iraq against the US and Iraqis.

Even though our "ally" Iraqi pooh-bahs have been taking and wasting billions of US tax dollars as well as US military protection from the *civil war* that has been flaring in their country without doing their work to make any substantial strides toward gaining peaceful negotiations between the three fighting factions in Iraq.

In short, though the Iraqi pooh-bahs claim to be our ally - even as they have been hob nobbing with their close Iranian pals from the getgo, Bush says Iran should be taught a lesson.

Oh, yes.

Telling Iranians they better leave our/their Iraqi pooh-bah pals alone, or they'll be sorry. They'll risk US invasion.

Of course such an invasion would completely crush our military and economic resources - both of which are stressed to the limit as it is.

But Bush doesn't seem to understand or care about these matters.

And there do not seem to be any leaders in the USA who can sound the alarm about this fraud and take action to get American soldiers, Marines, sailors, airmen and civilians out of harm's way there before Bush makes any more ignorant, deceitful and deadly decisions that don't cost him, personally, a cent - or a night's sleep for that matter.

Now, you may find a lack of evidence to back my assertions here. It's done for a reason. I'm hoping people will start caring enough to find out the truth for themselves.

Please do not take my word for this.

Find out the truth for yourself. Start with CNN's reports on our Iraqi 'friends' and their relationship to Iranian leaders.

Then be a detective. Go to the links, check out the backgrounds, the facts and the truth.

You'll discover that many Saudis - another "frienemy" of the US and neighbor of Iraq - have been paying for and actually supplying forces fighting the US in Iraq.

Finding facts has been extremely difficult because of the outright lies, misinformation, propaganda and cover-ups of the Bush administration.

But there is hope to find out what's really going on now because so many people who have known the truth are starting to emerge.

It's important that more and more people dig up the truth for themselves. And pass it on.

Bush credibility crushed on Iran WMD scare

So the update on the intelligence from and about Iran flies completely in the face of the threat that the Bush administration has painted for us. Remember him talking about Iran possibly starting "the Third World war" only a few weeks ago because they were a kiss away from building a nuclear bomb.

Just as he did with his push to invade Iraq, Bush told us and the Congress that we have to get going now because they're creating weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Now. And we can't wait to act. After all, to quote US Secretary of State Condi Rice, we don't want that "smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Right.

Well, the bungling Bush administration has done it again.

The US intelligence report (they work for the US and therefore Bush) just released says nope, Iran stopped working toward building a nuclear warhead in 2003.

2003.

Hmm. That's nearly four years ago.

Yep, there he is, our president. Right on top of what's really going on.

Sadly, although the military surge has worked in some areas of Iraq, stabilizing those places, the only way to achieve peace and to support them enough to bring them home is through political negotiations among the warring factions in Iraq.

And nothing is happening there politically. As in there is no movement toward a negotiated peace by the Iraqi government. Why should they try when they haven't been able to get along for centuries and the Americans are there to at least temporarily keep the peace.

Unfortunately, the only reason there needs to be a stabilization by US forces is because the US military was ordered to step into a wasp nest - invading the sovereign nation to begin with, which put our military men and women in harm's way. For no factual reason - but Halliburton and other multinational corporations with no-bid contracts have been paid billions of our tax dollars and borrowed money to "rebuild" the nation that we are responsible for destroying.

And it seems every time they've rebuilt something - it's destroyed. Heck, that's OK, because they're just paid more money to re-re-re-re-rebuild whatever needs it.

Meanwhile, US military men and women continue to be killed there, despite the surge "working," at least temporarily.

At least this time, with Bush's declaration that we need to take action against Iran immediately, decision-makers didn't take Bush's word, they actually read the intelligence report.

When the US intelligence report released before the decision to go to war with Iraq stated that there was no reason to go to war there, that invading the nation would only open a can of horrific quicksand from which we would never escape, apparently too few people read it to make a difference. Certainly it made no difference to George Bush.

This time, more people refuse to drink the kool-aid and are working to cover your backs, troops.

Merry Christmas.

Iraq's Congress takes off -- all of August ..

Without passing any laws that would help stabilize the country before they flew away for their vacation.

Every day they are vacationing, living it up outside the dangerous areas of "their nation," more than 8 million of their fellow Iraqis are suffering - trying to survive without basic resources like water, food, electricity, health care, housing and any measure of safety.

This after the US has paid some 200 billion *borrowed* dollars for reconstruction of the nation devastated from invasion and now civil war, with US soldiers caught in the middle.

Every day in August that American soldiers and civilian workers are wounded, maimed or killed because the Iraqi government literally refuses to stay and work to take control of their country is another day that President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney claim they need to "stay the course" and "win the war."

Exactly what does that "win" look like?

We Americans will have to pay for the hundreds of billions that Bush has borrowed to invade and fight that war, plus interest. A war we ought to have never entered to begin with.

Iraqi congress members are not stupid. Why should they stay and do their work when they can be on a paid vacation while the US keeps spending money on their corruption and time off, letting Americans die for President Bush's "crusade."

Rightly, those 8 million suffering Iraqis blame the US for their plight. If we had not invaded and occupied their nation, these problems would literally not exist.

Our military would have actually been able to disarm the terrorists at their previous and current headquarters in Afghanistan along the Pakistani border.

And, gosh, it's been proved a dozen times over that half the insurgents in Iraq killing Americans are from our "ally" Saudi Arabia. Just like the terrorists who flew planes into the Twin Towers on 9-11.

More, Saudis are funding these insurgents.

But what did we do for Saudi Arabia just last week?

President Bush asked the US Congress to allow the sale to Saudi Arabia $20 billion dollars in state-of-the-art weapons! They include advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighter planes and spanking new naval vessels.

Why give the Saudis all those advanced weapons?

In the minds of the Saudis, to offset Iran's supposed building of nuclear power, and President Bush agrees with his Saudi friends.

His close Saudi friends who warned him NOT to invade Iraq because he would set off more problems than he solved if he did.

And of course arming the Saudis means that we'll have to give another ally, Israel, more billions in support and sell them the same state-of-art weaponry because you *know* Israel is screaming that they are now more vulnerable with the Arabians having those state-of-the art weapons.

Hmm. True. But do you understand that this escalation is because of President Bush's "crusade?"

Do you understand that it's only common sense that many more world stability dominos will fall thanks to the "crusade" that President Bush is hell bent on "winning" at our expense.

Our "ally" Pakistan, which also houses terrorists, right on the border of Afghanistan from which Bush ordered our forces withdrawn to be redeployed to Iraq a few years ago, already has nuclear weapon capability.

So does India (thanks to the US), Pakistan's longstanding enemy.

Before President Bush invaded Iraq, there were serious concerns about these nations, their growing ability to arm themselves with nuclear weaponry because the stability of the entire region hung by a thread.

Please look at the map to see the close proximity of all these nations to one another and understand that leaders from all other nations and many members of the US Congress who voted against giving President Bush authority to invade Iraq were well aware of the tenuous relationships they had before the invasion of Iraq.

Um, none of those countries have moved. They were in the same place and just as close to one another before President Bush decided to make Iraq a democracy. Which it has no chance of becoming because of the additional warring factions of the Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds.

All three factions of Iraq who are no different now than they were before the invasion. Except they're armed. And dangerous to each other as well as to American soldiers.

Yep, the Bush-Cheney team not only broke the thread, they cut it with a hachet in 20 places.

All compliments of you and me paying our taxes, unlike Haliburton, which is paid billions to "rebuild" Iraq. It moved its headquarters from Texas to Dubai in order to avoid paying taxes in the US.

I have no idea how it could possibly happen - seriously - but I believe that as more and more facts emerge about the astonishingly dishonest actions and proclamations made by Bush and Cheney and their henchmen over the past six years, US Attorney General Alberto ("I don't remember.") Gonzales will be out within a month; and that Bush and Cheney will be out of jobs long before the end of their term.

Not because of any sort of liberal movement - but because conservatives are just as upset with him as the liberals. They believe Bush lied to them and is in no way reflecting a conservative agenda.

Piling up so much national debt is a good start; conservatives don't like government spending money. Disregarding the US Constitution and Bill of Rights comes a close second. Not supporting our troops comes right behind that - the troops are not getting what they need in the way of armaments to protect themselves (perhaps if they were Saudi Arabians....), the war in Iraq was mismanaged from the getgo, and US veterans are not receiving proper care when they come back wounded, maimed and in coffins.

Renewable resources: the key to a healthy economy and life!

A renewable resource continues to create something new rather than simply be used up or destroyed.

For example, education is a renewable resource because it helps people create work, art, skills and ideas that not only help the students, but the workforce, society and culture.

It gives a great return on the investment. People go deeply in debt for an education expecting to make many times over that amount when they graduate.

War is not a renewable resource. Its machinery and weapons are intended to destroy and are expected to be destroyed. More, the machinery are intended to destroy the resources of the enemy - their economy, natural resources, infrastructure, populations, animals and plant life.

The breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) is attributed to that government investing so much money in war machinery and military - spreading their fighting forces so thinly - that there was no money left to run the country.

There has to be some sort of balance or the economy of a nation suffers - or can be completely destroyed.

When we invest so much money in war machinery and armies, that is money paid out with no money coming back in, even when politicians insist there will be.

One of the reasons the Bush administration said that invading Iraq would not harm our economy is that Iraqi oil would pay for the war and rebuilding the destruction there.

Well, the war has crippled Iraqi oil production so the war has cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars - which we've had to borrow from other countries (China is a major source).

So after promising that the war would in effect create a new renewable resource for the US because it would bring oil to America? It turns out to not only be a *non*-renewable resource but a huge drain on our national resources.

People are a renewable resource. If they are killed in war, they cease to be a renewable resource and a need is created for replacing them.

Another reason war is a source of economic depletion: our wounded, maimed and traumatized veterans need expensive medical, dental and psychological care when they return and the government doesn't want to pay for it. The military really is a cheap workforce - the pay is deplorable. Medical and psychological care is not cheap. The payment to survivors of US veterans killed in war is also deplorably low.

Think of the renewable resources that surround us: animals who produce milk we drink. They not only provide the milk we drink - but babies who grow up to give us more milk. It's important to protect these animals from abuse or overuse so they can continue to be a renewable resource without having their lives cut short.

Egg-laying chickens? Renewable resource - again, as long as they are not stressed and abused to overproduce, cutting miserable lives short.

Imported goods? Renewable if exported goods are exchanged in kind.

This economic philosophy is known as guns and butter.

And it's pretty simple. If there's not some sort of balance? There's too much money going out with no promise of sufficient income? The drain on an economy laden with debt can be brutal.

You or I would be tossed out on the street if we lived this way.

The government just borrows money from other nations. In the case of Iraq, which is costing us more money than we generate in the US, it's many billions of dollars from China.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent who used to be a conservative Republican, now writing and speaking about the insanity created by the Bush administration in Iraq, says that this issue of the US being mislead into a war is not a matter of "left" or "right," Republican or Democrat.

It's a matter of right or wrong.

Oil companies, the Bush family bread and butter, are cleaning up at the gas pump as prices skyrocket - and will continue to through his presidency (remember he promised to keep gas prices down when he ran for election?).

His family will, as usual, enjoy fabulous Christmas celebrations for centuries to come while we try to figure out how to dig our way out of the sickening debt and recover from the unnecessary deaths created by his war.

The unlimited tax money and massive debt used to pay Halliburton (vice-president Cheney's former employer) to "rebuild" Iraq without a single bid or even a plan will certainly keep the Cheney family warm at night for centuries to come while other Americans freeze to death.

New government reports declare that attempts to rebuild the majority of warring Iraq are fruitless. As soon as something is built, it's blown up. But Halliburton is paid still more money to re-rebuild or re-re-rebuild ad infinitim, while it moves its main headquarters to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to avoid paying US taxes.

Guns and butter.

War and peace.

The people making money off the war are the cronies of Bush and Cheney - including private armies like Blackwater hired by them.

The losers are our honorable military men and women who with good conscience and courageous hearts put their lives on the line to carry out the orders of a president who can't be bothered to attend one of their funerals - even symbolically.

I wish on July 4, Americans would fly their flags at half mast in memory of all those American military men and women and innocent Iraqis who have given their lives over the past five years in a war that was entered by president Bush cavalierly, without integrity, honor or honorable purpose.

A US-instigated war which has fomented old wounds among all the warring factions of Iraq to the point that there is not one, but several civil wars being fought, while our soldiers become cannon fodder as they try to quell some of the killing.

Leave or stay, the Bush administration has fomented a bloodbath in Iraq that will not end until the Iraqis decide they want to stop killing one another.

What motivates too much of the killing now is one group pointing to the other, accusing the US of "taking sides."

That is the argument for the US getting out of Iraq.

Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney have plans to keep US forces in Iraq - a nation that was no threat to the US - for the foreseeable future, incorporating a policy similar to establishing a presence in south Korea.

And there is more talk of the US invading Iran, a nation which may well develop into a threat. One day.

That day is moving up more quickly because the most powerful nation in the world invaded its neighbor, Iraq.

Call them crazy, but they see invading their sovereign neighboring nation as a threat to their country.

Imagine that.

Imagine Russia invading and starting a war in Canada - think the US would consider that a threat?

Guns and butter can co-exist as long as the gun expenditure doesn't swamp the butter boat.

The situation gets dangerous when we have to start asking, as we become more and more deeply in debt because of war and money becomes scarce -- which we need more: guns or butter.

Depletion or restoration.

Some politicians know which side of their lives is buttered, because they continue to make a few people who are manufacturing war machinery -- who don't care who's buying their goods and services -- wealthy.

Very, very, very wealthy.