Jeff Koopersmith on McCain, Bush, Iraq, Afghanistan and the big, beautiful lie.
July 14, 2008 – Geneva (apj.us) – Today we find our President, George Bush Jr., contemplating the "drawdown" of far more troops from Iraq than had been anticipated.
Until now, Mr. Bush and his gang – which includes of course his cabinet, most of the Pentagon, and the men and women who build the equipment and weapons we use for war – were happy enough to stay in Iraq and sideline the Afghanis.
It seems too easy for them – the hawks like Senator McCain – to kill our children and others' children, wives, grandparents, aunt, uncles, brothers and sisters. Mr. McCain lived through Vietnam. We have almost 5,000 American soldiers and who knows how many contractors dead. Not captured – dead.
Add to that another hundred thousand – or is it a million – Iraqi civilians that would have been alive today had we listened to the experts and not to the deuteragomist cabal surrounding the Mr. Bush.
Mr. McCain and President Bush can blame the Iraqis when things go badly in that country. Their same deadbeat story is as follows:
"The Iraqis cannot defend or police themselves properly as yet.”
Alternatively, they roll out this talking point:
"Until Iraq can provide its own security, we will have to stay."
It seems to me that Iraq was doing just fine providing its security – with our help, with our weapons (including poison gas) that Grandpa Don Rumsfeld supplied to our “mortal enemy” Saddam soon after shaking the dictator’s hand for a photo op.
Now, though, we find that more American and coalition troops were killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq these past several weeks. Nevertheless, only around 75 dead kids on our side who were killed in Afghanistan versus 50 or so in Iraq. Heck, 25 more isn't that bad – especially when Iraq is doing such a great job of defending itself against itself.
You might recall that before Dick Cheney and his band of warmongers decided to go medieval on Saddam, the US had already bombed Afghanistan in a Bush-failure move to "get Osama bin Laden.” For some reason, we haven't been able to find bin Laden in the past six years, but we have been able to get the Democrats in Congress to go along with the Bush-Cheney FISA wiretap scheme and give the telecom companies complete civil immunity from caving in to Junior and Darth.
These lies are truly handsome, true in concept, and true in implementation as parroted by Mr. McCain.
"Heck," says Karl Rove who is covertly running the McCain campaign through his ‘colleagues’, “we don't have to bring our young fighting men and women home now! We can send them to Afghanistan instead, where the Soviets and the British had such startling success and where the corruption and drug money flow like the Harirud over President Karzai’s green silk cape."
Accordingly, there is no excuse now to move our troops and equipment out of the Middle East at all, if ever. If it's not Afghanistan, it will be to help our "friend" Perv Musharraf in Pakistan fight off the Taliban that he has knowingly and willingly allowed to grow stronger on his borders while spending American dollars on who-knows-what with the very billions we give him to control that problem.
If it's not Pakistan, it will be to help Mr. Mubarak fight the Taliban or Al Qaeda in Egypt. Maybe if oil gets pricey enough, it will be to invade the Gulf States because we don’t like the delay in getting rid of those niggling monarchies.
Hence we have Mr. Bush – after all, the buck does stop at this "Decider" jackal’s desk – and he will set the bloody table for Mr. McCain and everyone else who either makes money from war or from oil.
Next, Bush will find a reason to call up more reserves or re-start the draft. Or perhaps he will wait and let Cheney do it.
There will always be a first-class reason, of course, and a rationale designed to convince at least 50% plus one American voter(s) to support this catastrophic waste of humanity and treasure.
Therein lies the beauty.
Beauty, of course, is skin deep. Moreover, the beauty of Mr. Bush's lies will soon slough off and reveal the third degree burns called terrible and deadly lies.
Count on it.
Jeff Koopersmith is an internationally renowned political consultant, opinion research authority and policy analyst. He has lobbied for causes including the alternative fuel sector and women's health, and is an expert on the international real estate market. He lives in Philadelphia, Washington and Geneva.