Enough of the hocus-pocus
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by David Grand
April 29, 2004

Now, I don't how you feel about all the distortions and half-truths spewing out of the White House and the Pentagon these days regarding their Pollyanna view of how the war in Iraq is progressing. But personally, I've growing so weary of being led down the "primrose path" again and again by the administration only to find that it's covered with the same thorny bushes, sinkholes and ending nowhere, that I refuse to put on my hiking boots and safari hat anymore. For if they think we're winning that war, I'd like to hear what their definition of what losing it would be.

And I do wish the president would stop bombarding us with those trite platitudes, like "we'll never cut and run" (a Texan expression that LBJ often used to justify sending additional troops to Vietnam); and that "we must stay the course," regardless of how long it may take, how much money it'll cost (currently 4.2 billion a month), or how many flag-draped, military coffins will be returned here.

If he continues sounding like a broken record, I'll punch the mute button whenever he's given a speech on the boob tube. Or better yet, read another chapter of Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack," and learn about some of the other lies we were told before the war began; e.g., CIA Director George Tenet reply to the President's concerns about the existence of WMDs: "It's a slam dunk."

But when it comes to telling "whoppers" it's hard to top former assistant secretary of Defense Ken Adelman's prediction that the war with Iraq would be a "cakewalk," and with Vice President Dick Cheney boasting that Iraqis would welcome our troops with "garlands and flowers." (I've often been tempted to label Cheney as "Tricky Dick." But that appellation belongs to Nixon.

As regards the status of the war in Iraq, about the only good news I've heard for the longest time was when calmer minds apparently prevailed within the White House by calling off (at least for the time being) the planned invasions of Fallaujah (a city of 300,000 Sunni Muslims with about 2000 insurgents sheltered there), and the Shiite Muslims holy city of Najaf, with a militia force of 3,000 under the command of that Shiite cleric Mugtada al-Sadr.

Had, however, they'd been given the go ahead, the war would undoubtedly spread like wildfire elsewhere in Iraq and possibly lead to a nationwide insurrection (except in the Kurds' northern region). And attempting to fight a two-front insurgency would be as foolhardy of an undertaking as trying to lasso a tiger with one hand and a lion with the other.

Now, don't look to me to predict when and how that hellish war will end. For as history tells us trying to forecast the outcome of a war makes picking winning stocks and horses look easy. But for the sake of argument, I'll go way out on the limb and make a few uneducated guesses:

• That even if the draft were to be reintroduced, which Bush would not do in an election year, it would come too late to meet the urgent demands for providing enough troops to quell the growing resistance to our presence, which is rapidly approaching that of an all-out rebellion.
• That returning sovereignty to Iraq by July 1 will be largely "window dressing," and would not reduce the number of troops required to keep that U.S. puppet government in power, or lessen the resolve of the insurgents to continue their wave of terror, if not intensify their attacks.
• That, given that after a full year of occupation Iraq is nowhere close to being under control, if a "free" election were held today, instead of waiting until the first of the year, Iraqis would I believe opt for either a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system that they had up to 1958, an Islamic theocracy like Iran's, or (the least likely choice) a republic form of government patterned after ours.

And how could we deny them the right of self-determination that we profess to believe so strongly in? If we did, we'd be branded throughout the world as the biggest hypocrites that ever "came down the pike.