Dan Froomkin: It's Official, No Exit

Sweet Geebus, Dan. Did we listen to the same testimony, you and I, and didn't you already know that and who cares what is or is not official?

Didn't Junior tell us that we would be in Iraq as long as he was president? Why would anyone doubt it?

Petraeus, up on the Hill flapping his gums, very carefully as most people with political aspirations do, doesn't make anything official. George W. Bush is the commander-in-chief and Dick Cheney and his corporate pals are the policy makers. Let us never forget that. Did any of us even know the name, Petraeus, when Junior and Dick were lying their asses off and us into a giant pit of murderous, costly quicksand?

What I keep hearing is that Iraq will be the least of our worries by election time, because by that time, Junior will have made it a moot point by attacking Iran in some fashion and for some reason. He told visiting friends from Texas that he was busy tying the next president's hands and us into Mesopotamia for as long as "it" takes, whatever the hell "it" is. Meanwhile, Iran is being blamed for everything that has or ever will go wrong in Iraq.

If you listen to Obama, carefully, you will hear what his concern is and it's the same as mine. Junior and Dick are going to make damned sure that there is no diplomatic surge, as Obama is calling for, along with Joe Biden and most of the members of the Iraq study group, both Republican and Democratic. McCain wants us to believe that Obama is naive. Hillary Clinton has said as much herself. Do they want us to believe that all the others who are calling for diplomacy are naive as well?

According to Bush and McCain, there is no way we can get out of Iraq without the possibility of civil war, sectarian war, Osama bin Laden becoming the president of Iraq, genocide or some combination of the above and it will be all be our fault. None of us can say for sure that we won't leave a hideous mess if we pull out, even in a safe and orderly fashion. Of course we can't because we made that mess and we cannot clean it up. We are not going to be allowed to clean it up. As the old saying goes, you can either be part of the problem or part of the solution, but not some combination thereof. We are the problem, as far as the people of Iraq and the region are concerned.

Never mind that Bush and Cheney pulled some people into Iraq who claim to be Al Qaeda, or whom they claim is Al Qaeda, simply by invading Iraq.

Never mind that from shock and awe until today millions of Iraqis have been killed maimed and/or exposed to depleted uranium. If that isn't genocide, I don't know what is? Can anyone imagine the Iraqis actually coming up with anything worse to do to themselves?

Never mind that the simple arithmetic of the current situation is unsustainable. Our country, as well as our individual citizens, are in debt to eyeball level and many either are or will soon be in the streets...whole families. The military is past the breaking point. Pat Buchanan is always so concerned about the Mexican invasion he believes is happening. If the nation of Mexico did decide to invade, could our military handle it? Everyone I have listened to says that we cannot deal with one more stressor in the world militarily...no, not one. That is what is of such great concern to most military brass, past and present, so it should be our concern as well, especially now that we are considered a pariah nation.

The simple fact is that nothing good is going to happen in Iraq until we have a new administration. No one trusts this one. Americans, overwhelmingly want change. So does the rest of the world. Old John McCrackers is even scarier than Junior and Dick. He is a nightmare waiting to happen...for us and for the world. Hillary is Republican lite just like her husband and this country has had about all it can take of the neo-republican party. (O.K., she isn't exactly like him, but she can't be in the W.H. without him, and can anyone imagine him not trying to influence all kinds of policy?) The other last thing we need is another president who cannot admit a mistake.

If Americans have a shred of self-preservation instinct left, not to mention any sense of real morality, they will vote for Obama and a congress that will not be a total hindrance to him.


Dan Froomkin: No Exit 'Well, it's official. Getting out of Iraq is now exclusively the next president's problem.



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