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Don't Drink the White House Kool-Aid

It's surely a sign of mental illness when what is horrific and disastrous actually appears pleasant and good. This now must be the White House, if Thursday's news reports in Reuters is a faithful guide in this assessment.

On the one hand you have this news story reporting that "Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation." And then, on the other hand, you have this silly pronouncement from la-la land: "Iraq stepped close to 'the edge of the abyss' but is showing signs it can meet political benchmarks set as vital steps towards reconciliation, Washington's top official in Iraq said on Thursday." And then there's this plainly fake news.

One would think that this startling visual data from Thursday's New York Times would settle the issue:

Perhaps the mental illness in question is a form of destinesia, a frailty similar in scope to the happy suffering of the oblivious Alberto Gonzales.¹

1.  See yesterday's White House Press Gaggle, during which Tony Fratto says: "We think that the Attorney General has been honest and forthright in addressing those questions; and as I said earlier, most importantly, has the full confidence of the President."

Iraq Returns to Dust

It's reached the point where it's getting difficult to deny that Iraq is simply going to end up as a desert expanse with a central Green Zone of Americans who cavort with hand puppets. Everyone else will have fled,¹ been killed,² detained,³ or surrounded by concrete walls.⁴ Under such circumstances, especially since the so-called surge is not working, it is similarly difficult to believe that it is even possible for the US to "complete the mission, get it done right, and return with honor."⁵

1.  See Nir Rosen's comprehensive report, "The Flight From Iraq," in New York Times, May 13, 2007. Rosen reports that 50,000 Iraqis per month are leaving their homes behind, to be taken in by Egypt (100,000), Iran (54,000), Jordan (750,000), Lebanon (40,000), Syria (1.2 million), and Turkey (10,000). Adding to this crisis is the scandal that "the United States has accepted only 701 Iraqi refugees" since the invasion in 2003.
2.  We are well past the 100,000 mark set by the 2004 Johns Hopkins University's epidemiological study of civilian deaths in Iraq, but the numbers are now being routinely hidden from view. See "Iraq to bar press from blast scenes," BBC News, May 13, 2007; "US officials exclude car bombs in touting drop in Iraq violence," McClatchy Washington Bureau, April 25, 2007; "Disappeared without a trace: more than 10,000 Iraqis," McClatchy Washington Bureau, May 13, 2007; "Iraq refuses to provide civilian casualty figures to UN," Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2007;
3.  "New Detainees Strain Iraq's Jails," Washington Post, May 15, 2007
4.  See "Behind the Baghdad Wall," Time, May 9, 2007; "IRAQ: Walls will increase violence, specialists say," IRIN, April 23, 2007. In April the US Army began its version of the gated community in Baghdad as it built several miles of 10-12 foot high concrete gates (walls) around Sunni enclaves in the Azamiyah area and the neighborhood of Ghazaliya.
5.  "Cheney Warns Iran Sea Lanes Must Be Open," Guardian, May 11, 2007. According to a report issued today by the Government Accounting Office, the so-called "surge" in Iraq is not working, rendering reconstruction there an ongoing uphill and costly battle that is fought on a different front. See Rebuilding Iraq, GAO, May 15, 2007: "The US reconstruction effort was predicated on the assumption that a permissive security environment would exist. However, since June 2003, overall security conditions in Iraq have deteriorated and grown more complex, as evidenced by the increased numbers of attacks and the Sunni-Shi'a sectarian strife that followed the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. Enemy-initiated attacks against the coalition and its Iraqi partners continued to increase through October 2006 and remain high. The average total number of attacks per day has risen from 71 per day in January 2006 to a record high of 176 per day in October 2006. For the last 3 months, average attacks per day were 164 in February, 157 in March, and 149 in April 2007."