No Bridge To Tal Afar

Before I get to the part of this post mentioned in the title, I want to point out some other stuff.

Like many of you, I’m currently wading through the flotsam of Dubya’s speech last night in which he has pledged to send over 20,000 additional troops to Iraq. Since I can’t stomach watching or listening to this man, I navigated to the White House web site to read the transcript.

As I read this latest “plan for victory” filled with the usual vague, indefinite spin, I realize that it would take several days to properly examine and refute these too-little-way-too-late promises. However, one sentence hit me like a lightning bolt.

America's men and women in uniform took away al Qaeda's safe haven in Afghanistan -- and we will not allow them to re-establish it in Iraq.

Glenn Greenwald categorically destroys this lie here.

And by the way, I want to emphasize that what Dubya said is, in fact, a lie. It’s not a misstatement of fact or supposition or an erroneous claim based on bad intelligence.

It’s a lie.

And more than any other reason, that is why Dubya’s Iraq war has been such a horrible failure. It was a fundamentally flawed enterprise from its inception because he has never told us the truth (to say nothing of the legion of Repug and Dem politicos and media mongrels that are guilty of the same thing).

I just want to step back a bit and mention that I’m reading Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial” (at my typically glacial pace, so don’t expect an “omnibus” post on it anytime soon), and what comes across over and over about Dubya is the stunning arrogance and venality of this man. Yes, I know we’ve been inflicted with him for going on seven years now (ugh) and we know this too well, but only someone with this ragingly-out-of-control sense of self importance could concoct these Iraq fantasies and think they may actually come to pass.

And speaking of media mongrels (getting to the main point here), Atrios noted this exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Mary Matalin, in which Matalin said that Tal Afar is an example of Dubya’s “clear, hold, and rebuild strategy.”

Based on what I’ve read, I've come to think of Tal Afar as Iraq in a microcosm, rightly or wrongly.

Col. H.R. McMaster and Lt. Col Chris Hickey, as noted here, played a critical role in helping to restore something approximating order in Tal Afar, but unfortunately, chaos descended once more when McMaster’s Third Cavalry was replaced by a brigade of the First Armored Division, as noted here.

Don’t think for a second, by the way, that I’m blaming the First Armored Division for Tal Afar’s return to what you could consider a state of anarchy. I’m just pointing out that the only way you could ever hope to bring order to Iraq (or anything remotely like it) is to embed our forces for a long period of time in Anbar province or any other region containing the majority of the population.

And at this point, neither I nor the majority of the people of this country want to do that any more.

And I don’t want to hear scolding such as that from David Brooks in the New York Times this morning over that expressed wish (via a slam at the Democrats for “not having a plan,” of course). We have decided that the cost in life and limb to our service people and innocent Iraqis is no longer worth it (assuming it ever really was to begin with).

Last November, we told Dubya that we no longer trust him to conduct his war with any competency. And all the speeches in the world will never change that.

And by the way, I should point out here the class move by our corporate media in refusing to air Sen. Dick Durbin’s response.

And by the way (again), Eason Jordan has an interesting response to Dubya's speech here (haven't read through all of it yet), and Juan Cole makes good points also (via The Daily Kos).