I was perusing jotter's daily High Impact Diaries for November 30 and I noted that I had a diary on the Rec list exactly one year ago that remains as relevant today as the day I originally posted it.
The diary was titled: Dems need to debunk these two, KEY administration myths
(Read on...)
I defined the two myths thusly:
- Growing Iraqi military and police competency - Not true, and ignores the fact that troops who have been trained have proven to be more loyal to their religious and ethnic militias than to an Iraqi army or any local or regional police presence. We're training and arming militias for the ongoing civil war. Both Odom and Murtha confirm this in conversations with U.S. commanders on the ground that Iraqi troops cannot be trusted in battle because of their allegiances. (See this diary for details.)
- Iraq is full of foreign fighters - Bush and company use this to underscore their fallacious claim that we are "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here." Note Bush's use of the word "terrorists" to describe what were formerly called "insurgents." The military's own intelligence assessment estimates that only 5% of insurgent fighters (not "terrorists") are foreign, according to a recent report in The New York Times. Murtha cited figures of "under 10%." (See this diary for details.)
Just last Thursday, the 23rd, I put up this diary highlighting a long article written by Nir Rosen in the most recent issue of the Boston Review.
Rosen is an Arabic speaker with Iraqi dialect skills who has traveled extensively across Iraq, well outside of the Green Zone. His (long) article makes abundantly clear that we, indeed, have been arming and training the very people who are committing the kidnappings, torture, beheadings and attacks on our own troops.
And yet this week, there was Bush again peddling the same nonsense about "speeding up" the training of Iraqi troops, and citing Iraq as a vast haven for al Qaeda terrorists, neither of which are demonstrably true by our own military and intelligence estimates.
The obscene posturing by the administration on the use of the term "civil war" to describe what is going on in Iraq is another manifestation of the never-ending Rovian effort to always put propagandistic talking points ahead of reality.
What can we do to get our Democratic leaders and the press to start shouting the real truths from the rooftops? Or is it even necessary at this point?
Certainly, the public tide has turned against the war and Bush in the past year, but he continues to use these two lies to justify our "stay-the-course" presence in Iraq.
As many have written here, Iraq is over for us. Yet according to today's Times: Idea of Rapid Withdrawal From Iraq Seems to Fade
How can that be given the realities which were true a year ago and have become only more magnified since?
One of the many reasons I appreciate jotter's work because it gives us a window to the recent past. And, apparently, some things never change.
A sad truth for our troops caught in the middle of a civil war.
Update [2006-12-1 14:15:14 by Bob Johnson]:
The fact that Bush continues to peddle these lies and the fact that withdrawal seems to be receding rather than proceeding caused me to consider throwing my hat into the ring for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
My platform is simple:
President (Bob) Johnson announces immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq
And the minute the last U.S. boot is out Iraq, I resign the presidency... except for the big "Welcome Home" beer bash on the front lawn of the White House for returning U.S. forces.