By January 31. 2007, the first wave of the “surge” is due to make their appearance in Iraq:
WASHINGTON – The latest draft of the new strategy for Iraq that President will Bush will lay out Wednesday calls for an increase of more than 20,000 troops, with most going to Baghdad and 4,000 to Anbar province, one senior official said Tuesday.
The first wave of additional U.S. troops will go into Iraq before the end of the month under Bush’s revised plan, said the official, who requested anonymity because the plans have not yet been announced.
The plan also calls for responsibility for security for all the country’s provinces to be turned over to Iraqi forces by November, said another official, also speaking on condition of anonymity. Bush is due to unveil his plan in a speech Wednesday evening.
Iraqi troops will be responsible for security by November? Pardon me while I utter a few choice expletives. Come November, the situation will not have changed, Iraq willl not be responsible for its own security in every province, and thousands of dead and wounded American troops, along with thousands more dead and wounded Iraqis will be the result of this New Way Forward, Meanwhile, we, the American Public, will be listening, no doubt, to another speech about another new strategy for victory to be implemented by another new set of generals. Whatever victory means at this point.
My sincere and heartfelt condolences and apologies to all the men and women in our Armed Forces who will have their “rotations” (now there’s a word ripe with metaphorical allusions) extended and accelerated under this ridiculous excuse for a “new” military strategy to achieve victory in Iraq. What President Bush and his dwindling supply of keyboard warfighters are asking of you is beyond shameful, beyond dishonest, beyond any measure of sympathy or regret I could extend to your families and to you. You are being asked to fight in a futile and destructive conflict for reasons that were originally based on lies, and now apear grounded solely upon propping up the ego of a President who isn’t man enough to admit a mistake, any mistake, ever. I greatly fear that you are being set up to never come home, becuase we willl always have new enemies in that region of the world (Somalia? Syria? Iran?) to justify that you stay right where you are today: floating in a world of shit (to borrow a quote form Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam movie, Full Metal Jacket).
May god (whichever god you may believe in) have mercy on you, and on the Iraqi people. May Bush, Cheney, and all the other vultures who profit from, or feast upon, the carcass of this insanity, roast in hell for eternity. I don’t personally believe in a hell which exists after we die, but I could be wrong, and in this case I sincerely hope I am.