The Wheels Have Come Off The Trainwreck...

News item this afternoon from Bloomberg: Maximum Leader is calling for more U.S. troops to redeploy from other parts of the country into Baghdad.

Here's a bit of it: "Our military commanders tell me that this deployment will better reflect the current conditions on the ground in Iraq,'' Bush said. "And obviously, the violence in Baghdad is still terrible, and therefore there needs to be more troops.''

Holy crap... did the President just come out and say that? Am I dreaming this? Of course, this comes on the heels of another Tony Snow moment (and aren't these just becoming the most precious things ever!): You have -- I think there's an attempt, and it's very alluring to politicians here to try to make the situation sound like civil war everywhere. No, there are parts of Iraq where life is proceeding with a fair degree of normalcy, where people are enjoying greater economic opportunity and they're enjoying the fruits of democracy.

For real... read the whole briefing. It has become kinda sad, really. They have made Tony the journalistic equivalent of a prison bitch. They are not even pretending to try to get real information from him, now. They are just pushing the button on the battery pack that makes the monkey twitch...

But that aside...

Has the situation become so bad in Baghdad that we are now having to withdraw from the rest of the country to reassert our control over the capital? And regardless of what Tony Snow has been banging into his remaining veins to make it possible just to lurch out to the podium in the morning and say hideous shit like "it's getting back to normal out in the country in iraq" any objective reading, even from the wingnuts, will tell you that is not the case.

Are we really on the verge of losing?

Or can I really get the big tinfoil hat out, and say that putting a lot of U.S. troops in the capital would make it much easier to redeploy those troops to Israel/Lebanon...

Unfortunately, I can't offer a link, however I was listening to NPR this afternoon, and their correspondent covering the situation said that although Sec. of State Condi Rice has not made a commitment for U.S. ground forces to help Israel, the war planners in Tel Aviv "have proceeded as if that is going to be the case," and apparently officials from Ehud Olmert's government have gone around Rice directly to other officials in the Administration to press for a commitment for U.S. combat troops.

Good thing they'll be pretty close to an airport when the order comes... because apparently when you're too busy toadcranking UN observers, it's tough to root out the actual terrorists, and the U.S. has proven so efficient at that...

mojo send