Now Even Surgier!!!

These guys just don’t get it…

Americans. Want. This. War. Over.

Our military is over extended and facing a decades-long restoration and rebuilding phase. Our Army is being both abused and neglected. And the top-brass is doing the opposite of what needs to be done.

The so-called “surge” of troops is a sustained escalation, pure and simple, a Hail Mary pass made into triple coverage. We have been told that we can just deal, because it will last another year. Five years of fighting an urban guerrilla war.

The Pentagon announced yesterday that 35,000 soldiers in 10 Army combat brigades will begin deploying to Iraq in August as replacements, making it possible to sustain the increase of U.S. troops there until at least the end of this year.

U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that heightened troop levels, announced by President Bush in January, will need to last into the spring of 2008. The military has said it would assess in September how well its counterinsurgency strategy, intended to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, is working.

"The surge needs to go through the beginning of next year for sure," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander for U.S. military operations in Iraq. The new requirement of up to 15-month tours for active-duty soldiers will allow the troop increase to last until spring, said Odierno, who favors keeping experienced forces in place for now.

"What I am trying to do is to get until April so we can decide whether to keep it going or not," he said in an interview in Baghdad last week. "Are we making progress? If we're not making any progress, we need to change our strategy. If we're making progress, then we need to make a decision on whether we continue to surge."

While informing us that the troop buildup will proceed apace, and just get used to the daily deaths in double digits, damnit…

While telling us to suck it up, they also tell us it most likely ain’t gonna work…

Commanders said that even with the ongoing increase in Iraq of tens of thousands of American troops, violence could increase in coming months, and some indicators in Baghdad suggest that is already happening.

Partial data on attacks gathered from five U.S. brigades operating in Baghdad showed that total attacks since the new strategy began in February were either steady or increasing. In some cases, certain kinds of attacks dipped as the U.S. troop increase began, only to begin rising again in recent weeks. Overall, "the number of attacks has stayed relatively constant" in Baghdad, said one U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by name.

The U.S. military commands that oversee Baghdad and Iraq as a whole have so far failed to meet requests to release current statistics on attack trends, with some U.S. officers voicing concern that the information would be skewed by critics to argue that the strategy is not working.

People – Petraeus said it himself – the solution is going to be political – not military.

I realize that admitting to being the wrongest group of mother fuckers in history makes the moronic militaristic mental midgets at the AEI reluctant to suck it up and admit that they have been 180º from correct on every single thing. Yes, admitting to a degree of wrongness that is tantamount to treason is an unpalatable idea – but it is not going to taste better in six months or six years. how about instead of we suck it up and give them "two more Friedmans" - they suck it up and we call this whole thing off?

Does anyone else feel like they are in the War Room with General Ripper?

Congress needs to stand firm and take the steps available to them to end this fiasco now.

The steps I refer to include impeachment of both executives and at least one cabinet member.