Between Iraq and a hard head

While the International Red Cross documents the deteriorating conditions on the ground in Iraq and yet another report documents the misuse of intelligence in the build up to the U.S. invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney persists in what can only be described as the Iraqi Big Lie strategy, asserting once again, despite all evidence to the contrary, that some meaningful connection existed between Al Qaeda and the Hussein regime as a justification for this disastrous war.

What has been odd about the coverage of the so-called failure of intelligence that led America into its unfortunate adventure in Iraq has been the apparent reticence of the media to call a spade a spade and a lie, well, a lie. At least to these skeptical eyes it appeared from the inception of the public relations campaign to sell the invasion to U.S. citizens in 2002-03, one not dissimilar to the current Iranian campaign, that information was being cherry-picked or distorted to build an illicit case for war.

One of the little lies the mainstream media seems willing to accept is that the president was somehow wronged by the intelligence community, thus leading to our disaster in the desert. What was pretty obvious from the beginning, however, and what has now become well-documented, is that a team of self-appointed intelligence experts run out of the Vice President's office and led by the appalling then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith was deliberately twisting intelligence toward war. Why these liars have not been called on the carpet and their distortions better brought into the light of day (how many Limbaugh listeners, after all, still believe the VP when he makes a case for the war) remains a mystery to me. Surely this administration has demonstrated that it does not deserve such over deference, that it in fact only encourages the care and feeding of the reality distortion field that envelopes the White House.

Meanwhile, no one appears to have the slightest idea how to "win" in Iraq or even how to get out while maintaining the semblance of order. The White House seems bent on soldiering on to an ever-distant and unlikely moment of victory, though it is finding it increasingly difficult to enlist the military elite in this effort even as the volunteer army buckles under new costs. But few even now are willing to acknowledge that the U.S. presence in Iraq may only guarantee a perpetuation of the mayhem and the only sensible plan (Joe Biden's) for reaching a political stasis that could lead to an orderly military drawdown remains essentially off the table. While right wing pundits have already laid a solid "blame the messenger" case for the eventual failure of the U.S. adventure in Iraq, current policy seems perversely driven to repeat the shockingly awful spectacle of a complete, chaotic collapse a la Saigon '75.