It's only $50 Billion, and besides, we'll pay for it with tax cuts!

It was announced yesterday that Resident Evil™ plans next month to ask Congress for an additional $50 Billion dollars in funds to sustain the build up of American forces in the ongoing occupation of Iraq.

These funds would be in addition to the $460 Billion in the defense budget for FY 2008, and $147 Billion provided in a supplemental funding bill for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Preferably, this additional request would have been announced after the Petraeus-Crocker Happy Talk Express comes to deliver aWol's fat-pencil rendered report to the congwess. (There's pwogweth! It's twue!!! You can't thtop pounding thand down the wathole now, can you???)

The request is being prepared now in the belief that Congress will be unlikely to balk so soon after hearing the two officials argue that there are promising developments in Iraq but that they need more time to solidify the progress they have made, a congressional aide said.

Most of the funding in the revised supplemental spending bill would go for funding the current troop-buildup strategy that has brought troop levels to 160,000. The funding for the escalation was cleverly/dishonestly left off from the 2008 budget "because they weren't sure how long it would last." The overtures that indicate additional funding will be requested indicates that the powers that be want the killing to continue apace until next spring.

Meanwhile, the Resident continued his Deny Reality 2007 Tour™ with an appearance before the American Legion in Reno, NV on Tuesday, where he gave an optimistic assessment of recent events in the war, now in its fifth year. "There are unmistakable signs that our strategy is achieving the objectives we set out," he insisted. "The momentum is now on our side."

Ummm...Okay...I'm going to be 45 this Christmas. Does this mean I am finally going to get that pony?

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Hillary return from Iraq, Opposes Escalation

I awoke this morning to NPR and Hillary Clinton talking about her just-concluded trip to Iraq, and she is saying things I want to hear.

• She opposes the presidents proposed escalation and she wants to cap the number of troops deployed to Iraq.
• She wants to set conditions for the Iraqi government and put political benchmarks in place that must be met.
• She proposes that American troops be repositioned out of Baghdad and that American forces begin to pull back out of Iraq.
• She stated explicitly that we need to concentrate on Afghanistan and bolster troop numbers there in preparation for the upcoming Taliban spring offensive.(emphasis mine)

It will surprise no one that I agree with the Senator, since the only thing she is proposing that I haven't is the part about capping troop numbers - and I smacked my forehead for overlooking it as soon as she said it.

Don't get me wrong - this does not redeem her in my eyes. She still helped us get into this disaster, and I not only won't support her in the primaries, I will work vehemently against her; for that reason alone. I won't be forgetting that she was wrong and we were right, and I will be reminding everyone of that at every turn between now and when the election cycle gets going in earnest.

But on the other hand...Hawks deserting the cause is a necessary step in the process. I welcome them aboard, but they better be chastened because God Damnit, when you are this wrong, and the consequences are this big, you don't get a Mulligan.

(cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State)

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Marcus Welby He Ain't

Blue Girl's prescient entry (two) below got me thinking.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush made clear on Saturday that he was going ahead with his plan to send more troops to Iraq despite an angry reaction in Congress, and accused his critics of failing to offer an alternative

So ya go to the doctor. He tells you about the dark spot on your x-rays. Serious stuff. He outlines what he wants to do. High risk, no guarantees, in fact….

You mouth is dry, pulse pounding in your ears. You finally speak, “Can we please consider something else?”

“Fine!” your doctor snaps, tossing your record on his desk. “You tell me. What are we doing to do? Tell me now.”

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Soldiering Opinion.

Notice how these boys do not have the willingness, ability or desire to defend Bush’s policy. For them, war is about being at their buddy’s side at crunch time.

Click Here

No greater point here. God love and bless 'em.

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Bush at Benning

On Thursday President Bush made a foray to Fort Benning, GA in an effort to drum up support for his proposed escalation among those being asked to make the sacrifices for his plan.

The reception the president received was decidedly cooler than a Commander in Chief generally enjoys on a military installation. The crowd was decidedly subdued during the lunchtime address. Perhaps the fact that members of the Third Infantry Division, Third Brigade, have already served two tours in Iraq, and some were notified Thursday that they would deploy for a a third tour, and their deployment date had been stepped up by two months, as a result of the presidents scheme to achieve something resembling "victory" in the Iraq fiasco. Now they will ship out in mid-March instead of in May.

Under the new plan, more than 20,000 additional troops will be sent to Iraq, some from Fort Benning who learned Thursday that they would go earlier than expected. But instead of centering his address on the soldiers’ situation, Mr. Bush seemed to be aiming his talk at ordinary Americans and members of Congress who are skeptical of his proposal.

Mr. Bush acknowledged, as he did in his televised address to the nation on Wednesday night, that he had miscalculated the number of troops necessary to execute the military’s “clear, hold and build” strategy of securing Baghdad neighborhoods and tamping down sectarian violence.

“What’s new about this plan is there will be enough troops to clear, build and hold, and that our troops will be able to move alongside the Iraqis without political interference, and that’s very important,” the president said. He added, “This is something different that enables the military folks to predict that we will succeed in helping quell sectarian violence in Baghdad. The new strategy is not going to yield immediate results, it’s going to take a while,” he said, adding, “Yet over time, we can expect to see positive results.”

Dan Bartlett, White House counselor, who accompanied the president to Fort Benning replayed the days feedback-loop that if Democrats were going to criticize, they must come up with something better.“Those who have decided to judge this plan before it has a chance to work have a greater responsibility to propose something that will work,” Mr. Bartlett said. “We’ve yet to see that from the Democrats.”

Mr. Bartlett would be well served to check with HASC Chairman Ike Skelton, Representative John Murtha, or Senate Majority leader Harry Reid before repeating that cannard again, because there is no way to spin it...When he says this, he is lying. His unwillingness to admit that many Democrats have offered plans soes not negate their existence.

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I would also like to close this post by taking a moment to remind everyone that Mr. Bush claiming he "miscalculated" what force levels would be needed to depose Saddam Hussein and maintain order in a post-Saddam Iraq is disingenuous. The data was available, and it backed up everything General Eric Shinseki and others said before was based on a series of war-games known as Desert Crossing. Desert Crossing was conducted under the leadership of General Anthony Zinni, then commander of CENTCOM. The exercises tested "most likely" and "worst case" scenarios. The Desert Crossing exercises revealed that it would take upwards of 400,000 troops to secure the nation of Iraq after an overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and that even with that amount of manpower the country would probably still slide toward chaos.

From the report:

"There was consensus that the United States would not intervene without coalition support except under the most dire circumstances such as WMD use or catastrophic humanitarian disaster." --- Desert Crossing After Action Report, 1999.

"When it looked like we were going in, I called back down to CENTCOM and said, 'You need to dust off Desert Crossing.' They said, 'What's that? Never heard of it.'"--- General Anthony Zinni (ret.), 2004.

So you see, the only possible reasons for the president's "miscalculation" are incompetence, willful ignorance or mendacity. Whatever the reason he ignored the Generals from the outset, I see absolutely no reason that he should be trusted with more lives and treasure.

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