Too Much Trouble To Give Obama Credit, Huh?

While John W. McBush insists to anyone giving him the time of day that “the surge is working,” this Daily Kos post yesterday from diarist clammmyc paints a starkly different picture. And even Joe Klein and the New York Times tell us here that air strikes on Basra could lead to Mahdi Army retaliations ensnaring us into further involvement in a Shi’ite civil war.

Just clap louder, everybody.

Update 3/30/08: Speaking of Iraq, this post by smintheus at The Daily Kos is required reading, particularly concerning Basra.

But while this is going on, Democracy Arsenal’s Michael Cohen tells us here from the Washington Post that…

The United States has escalated its unilateral strikes against al-Qaeda members and fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, partly because of anxieties that Pakistan's new leaders will insist on scaling back military operations in that country, according to U.S. officials.

But wait…

Didn’t John W. McBush berate Barack Obama in February for suggesting the same thing, as Cohen notes? And Cohen also wonders why McCain has not blamed Bush either for “bombing our ally Pakistan.”

I’m sure Cohen knows the answer, but please allow me point out here that Dubya also blamed Obama for suggesting the very thing that he is engaged in as well.

And while I’m not averse to acting on reliable data in order to take out Osama bin Forgotten, the Washington Post story from the Democracy Arsenal link tells us…

Thomas H. Johnson, a research professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., said: "People inside the Beltway are aware that (Pakistani President Pervez) Musharraf's days are numbered, and so they recognize they may only have a few months to do this. Musharraf has . . . very few friends in the world -- he probably has more inside the Beltway than in his own country."

…

U.S. strategy could backfire if missiles take innocent lives. "The [tribal] Pashtuns have a saying: 'Kill one person, make 10 enemies,' " Johnson said. "You might take out a bad guy in one of these strikes, but you might also be creating more foot soldiers. This is a war in which the more people you kill, the faster you lose."

And I haven’t been able to determine whether or not Congress was consulted on the Pakistan bombing, by the way; knowing this regime, I’m inclined to think they weren’t.

The attacks in Pakistan were referred to as the “shake the tree” strategy by “a senior U.S. official.” But rightly or wrongly in the end, it will never be acknowledged by Bushco of course that the “seeds” for that “tree” were planted by a Democrat.

Update: By the way, this is a great analysis of how Bushco is "in the outs" with the new leadership of Pakistan and how that was made as plain as possible to John Negroponte, who was even called out over Honduras by Farrukh Saleem, executive director of the Center for Research and Security Studies.

This excerpt was noteworthy, I thought...

Then (Aitzaz Ahsan, chairman of the Supreme Court Bar Association), a graduate of Cambridge and one of Pakistan’s most talented orators, gave Mr. Negroponte a 10- to 15-minute discourse on why an independent judiciary was important to fight terrorism.

“I told him that the most effective weapon on the war against terror is a people who have enforceable rights — then they have a stake in the system,” Mr. Ahsan said of his conversation with Mr. Negroponte.

Mr. Ahsan said he argued that an independent judiciary was “a middle ground” between the military and religious fanatics.

When Mr. Negroponte countered that the new Parliament had pledged to deal with the question of the restoration of the judges within 30 days, Mr. Ahsan said he retorted: “I said you can’t build a Parliament on the debris of the judiciary.”

In contrast to Mr. Negroponte, a delegation of legislators, led by Rep. John F. Tierney, Democrat of Massachusetts, chairman of the National Security Subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee, visited (Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad) Chaudhry at his home on Thursday. They were the first foreigners to see the judge since police barricades were removed Tuesday after four months of house arrest.

“He believes the Parliament has a vote in the next 30 days and the judges will go back to work,” Mr. Tierney said after talking to Mr. Chaudhry. “That’s his position, and they’re sticking with it.”

More power to them (and it's clear that the air strikes may be one of the last ones we ever get in that country; though I think getting bin Laden is a priority, respecting the rule of law - what a concept for Bushco! - and international sovereignty are also).