I think Dick Cheney must be referring to some other “Surge™”

Last week on CNN, Dick Cheney was adamant that “The Surge ™” was working – if you will.

He is optimistic that the report to Congress by Petraeus and Crocker next month will be positive. (We’re winning!!!) "The reports I'm hearing from people whose views I respect indicate that the Petraeus plan is in fact producing results," insisted Cheney, employing the same shift-the-blame meme that has been peddled furiously of late. Of course this is not Petraeus’s plan. The “Surge™” was actually dreamed up by some fatassed armchair generals at the AEI, and everyone who has been paying attention knows it. (Emphasis on paying attention…given the state of awareness we currently realize, the mendacious pricks will likely get away with everything to date, and more into the future.)

It is going so swimmingly that the very next day, the appeal for help attempting to unscrew the pooch was made to the United Nations.

Two days after Mr. Cheney and his Midas delusions were singing paeans to Iraq, and freedom, and independence delivered at the barrel of a gun; Secretary of Defense Robert Gates continued dialing back expectations and admitting that the political process that the Surge™ was supposed to enable had not moved forward, and now the parliament is off on holiday until September.

Not only had stalemate and squabbling set in before the recess, but the Sunni al-Tawafuq bloc withdrew from the government of Nouri Kemal al-Maliki. They vacated five of the six ministry posts held by them in Maliki’s cabinet.

Secretary Gates admitted the lack of political progress. "In some ways we probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on legislation," Mr Gates said. (Speak for yourself, Bob. This is exactly what *We* said was going to happen.)

Adding insult to injury, the electric grid is so decrepit that it can’t keep the water pumping, and it is 120º in Iraq this time of year. Some areas have been without water for a week.

Much hay has been made of the reduced American body count for the bloodiest July yet – violence adhered to the established pattern. It abated in July, but it has already ticked back upward the first week of August.

And if all that wasn’t enough…approximately half of all light weapons supplied by American forces - 190,000 AK-47’s and handguns – have gone missing. That is a lot of firepower unaccounted for. The BBC reports on the World Service that a new GAO report reveals the weapons are certainly being used against coalition and Iraqi forces. And guess who was in charge when those weapons went missing?

Yep.

Dave Petraeus.

In October of last year, it was revealed in a GAO report that 1 in 25, or 14,000 weapons had gone missing, and there was great hue and cry about it.

I wonder what lesson they took from last falls weapons scandal? If I were a betting woman, I would wager that the lesson they seized on has nothing to do with securing the weapons caches. Instead, I would wager that the lesson they learned was to keep the lost weapons out of the media, which is preternaturally willing to comply with this craven administration.