President Bush, John McCain, Joe Lieberman and other fervent Iraq war supporters are attempting to paint the recent "troop surge", aka escalation, and the war in general as an improving situation, that is showing positive signs of progress. John McCain lambasted reporter Wolf Blitzer on CNN yesterday, for not accepting the prognosis that one could now walk freely and safely through various neighborhoods of Baghdad, in contrast to a few months ago. Unfortunately, and regrettably, McCain and Bush are flat wrong in their rosy optimism, according to someone who has truly assessed the situation on the ground, retired General Barry McCaffrey, who just visited Iraq:
"The population is in despair," McCaffrey wrote in an eight-page document compiled in his capacity as a professor at West Point. "Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate."
Iraq is “ripped by a low grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels.” He added, “the U.S. Armed forces are in a position of strategic peril.”
"There is no function of government that operates effectively across the nation … There is no province in the country in which the government has dominance. … No Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign NGO, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi — without heavily armed protection.
"In total, enemy insurgents or armed sectarian militias…probably exceed 100,000 armed fighters. These non-government armed bands are in some ways more capable of independent operations than the regularly constituted ISF [Iraqi Army]."
When, oh when, will the Bush administration tell us the truth??
source: The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032701923.html
