Bush "Optimistic" About Iraq

In his speech to veterans on Friday, President Bush said he was "optimistic" about Iraq's future. This speech was given a day after perhaps the most momentous explosion in Iraq to date leading to a situation that many view as bordering on civil war. Lots to be optimistic about, huh? ...

Today, Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) voiced the same rosy picture. Do you remember that Hussein spokesman who continued to say that US troops were being defeated, even as we watched on TV American tanks rumble into view behind him? I am beginning to see Bush and his acolytes in the same way as this pitiful Hussein toady.

In his speech to veterans in Washington, the President said:

We can expect the days -- coming days will be intense. Iraq remains a serious situation. But I'm optimistic, because the Iraqi people have spoken, and the Iraqi people made their intentions clear.

To maintain a rosy outlook is just what you'd expect from a former cheerleader. On the other hand, the battle at hand in Iraq has gone from bad to worse. While Bush has seemingly gotten some Iraq religious and political leaders to start talking to each other again, this might just be mere lip-service on these leaders' parts. What else are they gonna say when the leader of the power occupying your country calls?

Helena Cobban makes some astute observations about this situation. Noting that these leaders themselves may not have the backing of the Iraqis that Bush says they do, she asks whether the deal brokered by Bush is not simply window dressing. In another piece, Cobban echoes noted Mideast historian Juan Coles' report that Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, is solidifying some form of tribal allegiances. Cole suggests that Sistani's effort could actually be an effort to bolster those Shiite death squads we've heard so much about. Both Cobban and Cole see the potential here for the Shiites exiting from the government that Bush touts so much.

In another indication that the Bushites and neoconservatives are detached from reality, neoconservative mouthpiece William Kristol said on a FoxNews program that the US has not really fought hard enough in Iraq. With perhaps 250,000 civilian men, women and children dead in this war, the Iraqi economy worse than under Hussein, and the infrastructure in shambles, one wonder how much destruction and death the death cultist Kristol would like to see in Iraq.

What in this developing hell-like scenario provides the glimmer of optimism that the President expresses? As I have argued before (here and here) the grand plan of the Bush administration has not been to bring democracy to the Mideast at all. Instead, it is to create as anarchic a place as possible.

This plan falls out in the following way: if the Shiites continue to fragment, they will move closer to Iran. Aligning Iraqi Shiites to Iran would provide the rationale that Bush and the neoconservatives need to launch a ground invasion of that country. Preparations for such an invasion are perahps underway.

The Financial Times reported that expeditionary Marine squads are contacting dissident elements within Iran. Following the pattern of attack developed in its invasion of Afghanistan, the US military will use these dissident elements to form the advance guard in an invasion.

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