quagmire

Even when the words in question have had 40 years' worth of sacred, timeless truth seeping into each and every one of them.

Freshman Congressman Patrick Murphy issued the following response to Bush's attempt to dig America deeper into the Iraq quagmire:

Today, Pennsylvania Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-8th District), former U.S. Army Captain and Iraq war veteran, issued the following statement in response to President Bush's call for more troops in Iraq:

"What we need is a surge in diplomacy, not an escalation in forces," said Congressman Patrick Murphy. "I side with military experts like General Colin Powell and General Abizaid who say we need a political solution, not a military escalation. I know from experience that our current course is terribly misguided. We need a timeline to bring our troops home so that Iraqis come off the sidelines and fight for their own country."

"It's time that Iraqis stood up for Iraq, so we can bring our heroes home and focus our efforts on protecting America and capturing and killing Osama bin Laden," added Murphy.

Prior to being elected to Congress, Murphy served as a Captain in the U.S. Army as part of the 82nd Airborne Division in Bosnia and Iraq. He is the first and only Iraq war veteran to serve in Congress. He is a former West Point professor and criminal prosecutor.

Patrick Murphy was one of the surprising wins last year who rode the wave of American anti-war sentiment. Seems he is listening to the voters where Bush is not.

In sharp contrast to the Republican claims that all is well in Iraq, Tony Blair recently admitted that Iraq is a "disaster."

This comes via Truthout.

Tony Blair admitted that British intervention in Iraq has been a disaster last night - sending shockwaves through Westminster.

In his frankest admission about the war to date, Mr. Blair admitted that Western forces have been powerless to stop the descent into violence.

The Prime Minister stopped short of accepting the blame for plunging Iraq to the brink of civil war - blaming instead the insurgent uprising that has killed 125 British troops.

But his admission in an interview with the Arab news channel Al Jazeera will be seen as an historic climbdown for Mr. Blair, who has always fought to put a positive gloss on often disastrous events.

Challenged by veteran interviewer Sir David Frost that the Western invasion of Iraq has "so far been pretty much of a disaster", Mr. Blair said: "It has."

...

Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, told the Daily Mail that Mr. Blair's desire to forge a "liberal democracy" in Iraq was a "naive" failure and commented: "Whatever consent we may have had in the first place" from the Iraqi people "has largely turned to intolerance."

and lest we forget what Blair means when he admits the Bush/Blair Iraq policy has been a disaster, here is a reminder from the same article:

Bush's idea of staying the course is insane on almost all levels. Stay the course on a stagnant economy? Why? Stay the course on global warming? Stupid and a missed economic opportunity! Stay the course on al-Qaeda? Bush STILL doesn't seem to care about catching bin Laden, the man who actually attacked America. Stay the course on Iraq? The course in Iraq is a spiral of violence that is beyond Civil War. Civil War implies two organized sides. Iraq is descending into the chaos of Afghanistan and Somalia, the exact kind of chaos that ENCOURAGES al-Qaeda and destablilizes the entire region.

The latest sign that he Iraq quagmire is an out of control mess that Bush has fumbled about every way he can is the fact that Iraqi academics are being killed at an enormous rate and those who survive are fleeing the nation as fast as they can.

From Salon.com:

Gunmen killed the Shiite dean of Baghdad University's school of administration and economics along with his wife and son on Thursday, four days after the murder of a prominent Sunni academic.

Jassim al-Asadi was driving with his family in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah when unidentified assailants pulled alongside and opened fire, police Lt. Ahmed Ibrahim said.

The shooting follows the killing on Monday of geologist Essam al-Rawi, head of the University Professor's Union and a senior member of the hardline Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, which is believed to have links to the anti-Shiite insurgency raging against U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies.

George Bush is getting tough on incompetence and corruption...in Iraq. In what appears to be an admission that Iraq has become worse than ever, Bush is threatening to impose "penalties" on the Iraq government if they don't meet specific "deadlines" in stopping the violence. These "penalties" will include the removal of ministers deemed "incompetent" or "corrupt."

From the Telegrah:

President George W Bush met his top generals to discuss the deteriorating situation in Iraq as it was reported that America is considering punishing Baghdad if it fails to meet deadlines to stop the violence.

The new policy would mark a dramatic shift from the previous position that progress could only be determined by the "situation on the ground".

Instead benchmarks would be set covering progress in the Iraqi military, police and economy that if missed would result in the imposition of "penalties" by Washington.

These would include "changes in military strategy", which could mean troop cuts or redeployment within Iraq, or the removal of ministers deemed incompetent or corrupt.

The revelation comes after Mr Bush indicated on Saturday that the US, which suffered one of its deadliest months in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003, intended to change its tactics.

So, Bush is finally realizing he is failing in Iraq? My question is does his threat include removing himself and his Cabinet for their incompetence and penalizing Halliburton and the Republican Congress for their corruption? Meanwhile, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British Prime Minister's former envoy to Iraq, described the situation in Iraq as a "mess" and urged ministers to admit their failure (from the same article):

Sometimes the sheer stupidity of the Republican Party is amazing. And they never...never...NEVER can admit a mistake even when thousands of lives are lost because they can't admit a mistake.

For all those Democrats who believed that we were getting ourselves into another Vietnam when we invaded Iraq, here is the proof: Bush is getting advice from Henry Kissinger, the architect of our great failure in Vietnam. From Salon.com:

September 29,2006 | NEW YORK -- Henry Kissinger has been advising President Bush and Vice President Cheney about Iraq, telling them that "victory is the only meaningful exit strategy," author and journalist Bob Woodward said.

The Washington Post editor's third book on the Bush administration, "State of Denial," comes out next week.

In an interview airing Sunday night on CBS-TV's "60 Minutes," Woodward said that U.S. troops and their allies are being attacked, on average, every 15 minutes.

"The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon saying, 'Oh, no, things are going to get better.'"

He said Kissinger, who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, has been telling Bush and Cheney that "in Iraq, he declared very simply, 'Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.'"