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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (138481)	6/30/2004 10:44:29 AM
From: exdaytrader76	Respond to of 281500

Things are going really, really well in Iraq Time to call Iraq war a failure June 29, 2004 The New York City schools this year implemented a very controversial program to end social promotions. One of the fail-safe points comes in the third grade, when students, for some odd reason, have to prove they can read and do some math. It's a good thing for the Bush administration that Mayor Bloomberg was not doing Paul Bremer's job. If so, Iraq would have been left back. Instead, Iraq graduated to sovereignty two days early - a ceremony accelerated not because Iraq was doing so well but because it was doing so badly. The real failure here is not Iraq's, of course, but the Bush administration's. It is the parent and it once set out certain goals for its progeny that, by any measure, Iraq has not met. Iraq is by no means secure, nor can it stand on its own. About 130,000 American troops remain there, fighting an insurgency that even the Pentagon, not known for its frankness, concedes is "much stronger" than anyone anticipated. Beyond that, no one seems to know who leads it. To quote "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "Who are those guys?" The ceremony in Baghdad is the appropriate time to pronounce the war in Iraq a failure, maybe even a debacle. Its only success was the removal of Saddam Hussein - an ogre, yes, but one who had been largely defanged by years of UN sanctions, arms inspections and his own stunning incompetence. No meaningful link to Al Qaeda has been established, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and no diminution of terrorism has resulted - an astounding trifecta of failure. In fact, there is more worldwide terrorism than ever before. More successes like Iraq, and Americans won't want to travel farther than Bruce Springsteen's Jersey Shore. Yesterday's ceremony was propelled partly by the upcoming American elections. The apparent policy of the Bush administration is to keep combat deaths to a minimum - even if that means letting the bad guys go. It has enacted the doctrine first enunciated by Richard Nixon's attorney general John Mitchell, who, in paraphrase, said, "Watch what we do and not what we say." So watch when American soldiers do not clear out infestations of militia fighters, as has already been the case in Fallujah. That might be bad for Iraq but it's good for Bush in November. We all should wish the graduate well. If Iraq implodes, then the Middle East that Bush wants to transform into an Islamic Iowa is going to go to pieces. Already, the Kurds are making noises that sound suspiciously like a declaration of independence and no one, it seems, knows what the Iranians are up to. A supposedly new Iraq was born this week, a graduate going off - really being kissed off - without the necessary skills. The insincerely proud parent of this miserable misfit is the Bush administration, whose incompetence has been staggering. Monday's charade, though, is only half done. Graduate the kid, if need be, but fail the principal. -Richard Cohen nydailynews.com