Cross posted at the front pages of ePluribus, My Left Wing and Pen and Sword. Also at Kos. 

The “meeting of the mindless” has taken place in Jordan, and young Mister Bush has declared that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is “the right guy for Iraq” and that “We’re going to stay in Iraq to get the job done so long as the government wants us there.”

Guess what.  The Iraqi government is going to want us there as long as al-Maliki is the government.  That’s why he’s the “right guy.”

Bush and Maliki have agreed to speed up the process of training Iraqi troops, but won’t set a timetable for doing that.  

Guess what.  If there’s no timetable for training up Iraqi troops, they won’t get trained up.  

Mister Bush says the training of Iraqi troops is “evolving from ground zero.”  

Guess what.  Iraqi troop training was at ground zero three years ago.  With no timetable for bringing them up to ground one, they’ll be at ground zero three years from now.

Guess what else.  It doesn’t matter how fast Iraqi troops “stand up” because they’ll still insist on sitting down on the job.  Time and time and time again, Iraq’s army has refused to participate in operations because its soldiers don’t want to fight other Iraqis, and its police force is more corrupt than Chicago’s cops were during the Al Capone era.  

When asked by reporters when he expects the transfer of responsibility to Iraqi forces to take place, Bush said, “As soon as possible… I’ve been asked about timetables ever since we got into this. All the timetables mean is a timetable for withdrawal…  All that does is set people up for unrealistic expectations.”

“Unrealistic expectations” is the most realistic thing Bush has said in six years.  It’s unrealistic to expect that Maliki can deliver a political solution in Iraq, and it’s unrealistic to think that Bush has any intention of ever pulling troops out of Iraq.  

And the sad reality is that the longer Bush and his coterie of yes men are in charge of America, and the longer they’re able to molest the Middle East situation, the more impossible it will be to ever extract ourselves from it.  

Which means everything’s going according to plan, I’d guess.  

Guess Again

In case you haven’t noticed, the big media have been running the next round of Iran boo noise lately.  Everything going wrong in Iraq is Iran’s fault.  Iran is training and arming the Shiite militias.  

It’s a funny thing, though.  The real problem in Iraq, according to Bush, is al-Qaeda, which is “fomenting” all the sectarian violence, even though the Pentagon says that al-Qaeda only represents a tiny fraction of the “enemy” forces in Iraq.  

But here’s an even funnier thing.  Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace, who also says al-Qaeda is the main culprit in Iraq, is pulling troops out of the al-Anbar province, al-Qaeda in Iraq’s base of operations, and putting them in Baghdad, smack in the middle of the civil war between Shiites and Muslims that both Bush and Pace deny is occurring.  A recent Marine Corps intelligence assessment said that the battle for al-Anbar is unwinnable without a major infusion of more troops in the region.  You’d think that Pace, a Marine himself, might pay heed to that report, and might suggest that rather than take troops out of Anbar to reinforce Baghdad, we should take troops out of Baghdad to reinforce Anbar.  

But no.  That makes way too much sense for the Pentagon to suggest it, and our Pumpkin Eater JCS chairman isn’t about to recommend something to our Commander in Chief that he doesn’t want to hear.  

Because, you see, if we were to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq, well, then we wouldn’t have an excuse to stick around in Iraq to try and put down a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites.  At the same time, if we don’t make it look like the Shiites are the bad guys, or at least some of them, because then we can’t blame Iran for being behind all the sectarian violence.  Because the Iranians are Shiites, see, and they’re the main instigators in all this.  

Yeah, Maliki is a Shiite too, but he’s our kind of Shiite, the kind that wants us to stick around in Iraq so those al-Qaeda sympathizing Sunnis don’t try to take Iraq over from those Iran sympathizing Shiites, who are those Shiites other than Maliki.  Except that Maliki is talking to the Iranians, but that makes no never mind, because the Iranian Shiites are Persians, see, and the Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and Arabs and Persians don’t like each other even if they’re both Shiites.

And besides, the Iranians are friends with al-Qaeda even though the Iranians are Persians and Shiites and al-Qaeda is an Arab Sunni outfit.

Does everybody get the picture now?

Anybody’s Guess

Alas America.  We had so much potential, after the fall of the Soviet Union, to lead the world into an unprecedented age of peace and prosperity, and look what happened.  Our political leaders are ideological mouth breathers and our military leaders are moral cowards content to let their troops get chewed up in a senseless war for which there is no military solution.

Don’t expect any recommendations of the Baker Commission to make a tinker’s dam worth of difference in the Middle East Bush-mania, and if you think the newly elected Democratic Congress will be able to rein Bush in, guess again.  

The only way we can turn this pathetic situation around is to impeach both Bush and that Thing/King Pin/Penguin looking bastard Dick Cheney, and ash can every careerist four-star military officer who went bottoms-up for them.  

If you think that’s going to happen in the next two years, guess again.  

Watch for more “official leaks” that encourage us to support spreading the Gulf region lunacy into Iran and Syria.  And guess who will be behind them.  (Hint:  he’s already been mentioned in this article, and is an old neocon  buddy of Dan Quayle.)

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.