Pentagon Secrets: Sources Say Bush to Double U.S. Troops in Iraq

I can no longer fathom any rational reason for George Bush and Dick Cheney to prolong the Iraq War.

It's difficult to accept that they would continue this discretionary, poisonous conflict for personal gain (control of oil), for political advantage (force Democrats to clean-up the mess), or out of stubborn childishness ("I'm the decider!").

It's difficult to to comprehend that Bush and Cheney could be so psychotically insulated from the excruciation and death caused in the U.S and Iraq by their war. But no other explanation is apparent...

Today, the San Francisco Chronicle reports the unimaginable and the wholly unacceptable:

"The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

"The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

"The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades. "

And even I was shocked when, on last Sunday's "Meet the Press," moderator Tim Russert, Sen. Chris Dodd and Republican Newt Gingrich agreed that "... there are only 6,000 Iraqi troops who are fully trained and independent outside of American support."

The hard truth is there is NO ongoing serious effort to train Iraqi forces to replace U.S soldiers in Iraq.

And the Bush Administration is shipping soldiers to Iraq in unprecedented levels... while the U.S. Congress dithers impotently, and the Iraqi parliament mulls a summer vacation in July and August.

Meanwhile, the Bush-sanctioned killing and maiming continues...

I'm at a loss for words to adequately convey the abject moral wrongness of the Iraq War in mid-2007.

But Sen. John Kerry's eloquent, patriotic 1971 plea about Vietnam to Congress , applies equally today to the Iraq War:

"Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake...

"We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

"... We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership?"

Related Reading
Iraq War Statistics & Results as of May 16, 2007
John Kerry's Famed 1971 Testimony to Congress on Vietnam
Iraq War Chatter & Insights in 2007
San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 2007: Bush could double force by Christmas
CNN, May 3, 2007: Iraqi parliament's break tests Congress' patience