Doug Watts did a nice critique of the just published Michael Hirsh Newsweek piece: In For the Long Haul; The Petraeus plan will have U.S. forces deployed in Iraq for years to come. Does anybody running for president realize that?. Hirsh has some rather choice warnings for the American people. Among them:

As Democrats and Republicans back home try to outdo each other with quick-fix plans for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and funds, what few people seem to have noticed is that Gen. David Petraeus’s new “surge” plan is committing U.S. troops, day by day, to a much deeper and longer-term role in policing Iraq than since the earliest days of the U.S. occupation. How long must we stay under the Petraeus plan? Perhaps 10 years. At least five. In any case, long after George W. Bush has returned to Crawford, Texas, for good.

You get the idea. But in case you don’t, here’s a little more.

To a degree little understood by the U.S. public, Petraeus is engaged in a giant “do-over.” It is a near-reversal of the approach taken by Petraeus’s predecessor as commander of multinational forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, until the latter was relieved in early February, and most other top U.S. commanders going back to Rick Sanchez and Tommy Franks. Casey sought to accelerate both the training of Iraqi forces and American withdrawal. By 2008, the remaining 60,000 or so U.S. troops were supposed to be hunkering down in four giant “superbases,” where they would be relatively safe. Under Petraeus’s plan, a U.S. military force of 160,000 or more is setting up hundreds of “mini-forts” all over Baghdad and the rest of the country, right in the middle of the action. The U.S. Army has also stopped pretending that Iraqis—who have failed to build a credible government, military or police force on their own—are in the lead when it comes to kicking down doors and keeping the peace. And that means the future of Iraq depends on the long-term presence of U.S. forces in a way it did not just a few months ago. “We’re putting down roots,” says Philip Carter, a former U.S. Army captain who returned last summer from a year of policing and training in the hot zone around Baquba. “The Americans are no longer willing to accept failure in order to put Iraqis in the lead. You can’t let the mission fail just for the sake of diplomacy.”

Okay. Now I think you’ve got it. We’re digging in, taking over for the Iraqis, gonna stay for five to ten more years. That’s what is actually required for Petraeus’ counterinsurgency plan to work. Never mind that the American people won’t stand for this unless they each receive a personalized envelope of anthrax post-marked from Ramadi; this is still the idiotic plan. Cost estimates, anyone? Troop requirements? Never mind. Defeat is not an option. Those personalized anthrax letters? That might be a psychological requirement. So grab your duct tape, some plastic sheeting, and a few jars of ciprofloxacin. It could be a bumpy ride.

If you think that is paranoid, maybe you can come up with another way for this administration and their allies to keep our government bogged down in Iraq for another decade. I mean, let’s just look at the current context.

The Vice-President has been exposed as a warmonger that set up shops to fabricate and disseminate evidence for this war. His chief of staff is waiting to hear how many years he is going to spend in prison. James Baker thinks we should get out. Brent Scowcroft thinks we should get out. So do important Senators like John Warner and Chuck Hagel. The House just passed a non-binding resolution saying, essentially, that our commander-in-chief is incompetent to make command decisions, and they are working on drying up his supply of reinforcements. The Senate is filled with Presidential aspirants, none of whom have a snowball’s chance in Las Vegas of winning a primary or caucus if they haven’t moved heaven and earth to try to end this damned war.

You think the President has ten years to dick around? Shit. He barely has two months before some seriously heavy drama starts coming down on his head. It’s gonna to start early next week when Joe Biden moves to amend the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). And it’s just gonna get uglier from there as Hillary, Dodd, and Obama try to get some love and attention as anti-warriors. The jig is fucking up. Except the Vice-President is trying to double down. Let’s look at this shit:

British Government sources have told The Times that they fear President Bush will seek to “settle the Iranian question through military means” next year, before the end of his second term if he concludes that diplomacy has failed. “He will not want to leave it unresolved for his successor,” said one.

But there are deep fissures within the US Administration. Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, who has previously called for direct talks with Tehran, is said to be totally opposed to military action.

Although he has dispatched a second US aircraft carrier to the Gulf, he is understood to believe that airstrikes would inflame Iranian public opinion and hamper American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. One senior adviser to Mr Gates has even stated privately that military action could lead to Congress impeaching Mr Bush.

Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, is also opposed to using force, while Steve Hadley, the president’s National Security Adviser, is said to be deeply sceptical.

The hawks are led by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, who is urging Mr Bush to keep the military option “on the table”. He is also pressing the Pentagon to examine specific war plans — including, it is rumoured, covert action.

I get pissy sometimes with my friends on the left. They keep telling me that impeachment ain’t happening. Tell it to Mr. Gates ‘senior advisor’. But why should we wait for the President to start a war in Iran. The motherfucker wants to spend the next decade in Iraq. That’s insane enough. These people are insane. And they’re incompetent. You think the world wants to see him waltz out of the White House on January 20, 2009 like nothing fucking happened? And we’ll just say, ‘sorry about that ugly chapter in American history, we’ll try not to let it happen again’? You think crap like that is gonna fly over there…or here…if these people refuse to get the fuck out of Iraq? If they attack Iran. Forget it. Congress is going to tell him to get real a long time before that. They’ve already started and electoral logic demands they keep it going and ramp it up.

So grab your emergency supplies and check the locks on your bombshelter. Something nasty is in the works. Cuz there ain’t no other way they’ll ever get their permawar without a fresh dose of megaterror. A Gulf of Tonkin Persian Gulf Incident ain’t gonna cut it this time. No Remember the Maine. No phony Kuwaiti incubators. No phony WMD. If they think this country is going to fight another decade in Iraq and add Iran to the mix…they must have some pretty grim ideas about how to dramatically refocus our minds on the need for a big daddy dictator that can protect us.

They’re crazy. They can’t be trusted. And they don’t know what they’re doing.

“I don’t take anything Cheney says seriously anymore’- Hillary Clinton

I do. I take him as seriously as a heart attack. So do the Brits. They’re fucking terrified. They’re hightailing it out of Iraq. It ain’t the fedayeen Saddam that’s got ’em spooked.

“The real anomaly in the administration is Cheney. I consider Cheney a good friend — I’ve known him for 30 years. But Dick Cheney I don’t know anymore.”- Brent Scowcroft

He’s gone over to the dark side. As General Corman said of Colonel Kurtz:

“He’s out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.”

And Col. Kurtz is the closest thing fiction has produced to compare to Cheney.

Kurtz: It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.

That’s Cheney speaking to you. I have no idea what moral leprosy has crawled into his mind, or when it happened, but he is insatiable at this point. He should be considered capable of anything that is within his grasp to command. No moral terror is absolutely out of bounds for this man and his followers (of which our government still has far too many).

Gather your garlic, and your crosses, and your holy water, duct tape, plastic sheeting, and
ciprofloxacin. And let’s get moving on removing these people from office.

“What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.”- Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Colin Powell

Nor Congress. Patrick Fitzgerald put it another way.

“There is a cloud over the vice president. … a cloud over the White House over what happened. We didn’t put that cloud there…That cloud is something you just can’t pretend isn’t there.”

No. You can’t pretend it isn’t there. You can’t trust these people. They’re dangerous. They need to be restrained.