Surge or Purge?

Tonight we will receive the Word from On High, as Cheney/Bush try to convince the American public of the efficacy of his own leadership. As part of his spiel he will tell us of his "New Way Forward" in Iraq.

Breaking down the numbers is usually the way I try to look at problems. Today's problem? Cheney/Bush's proposed surge or escalation of their occupation of Iraq. With roughly 130,000 troops in the arena (previously as high as 150,000) Cheney/Bush propose adding another 21,500 troops. Given the structure of the Army my military contacts tell me that puts roughly 12,000 soldiers with guns on the streets. The remainder of the troops functioning to support the gunmen. Dividing the troops into three shifts, we are down to 4,000 additional troops in the streets of Baghdad, a city of 5 million people. A drop in the civil war bucket.

88 deaths were reported yesterday in Baghdad alone. Shiia and Sunnis are locked in a civil war that promises to spiral out of control. The US's puppet government headed by Malawki is unable to exercise control over Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

So this is the "plan" that the Demopublicans and the Cheney/Bush regime are fighting over. Much adieu about nothing? Or is it just a extension of the existing policy with the purpose of pushing through a hydrocarbon law opening up Iraq's oil deposits to exploitation by Exxon/Chevron/Arco/BP? We shall see, but breaking down the numbers yield little more than more targets for the Shiia and Sunnis to shoot at we they get bored of aiming at each other.

The cosmic joke here is that a surge of troop in Afghanistan might help stave off the return of the Taliban, but that is not what Cheney/Bush is offering up in their smörgåsbord's of disaster spawned by the most incompetent implementation of a foreign policy since the inception of America.