An exercise in lunacy

Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
- President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002

Bob Herbert starts his excellent commentary in the NYT with this quote from this countries messianic high priest.

There should no longer be any doubt that the war in Iraq is an exercise in lunacy. It was launched with a spurious rationale, the weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be a fantasy relentlessly stoked by obsessively hawkish middle-aged men who ran and hid when they were of fighting age and the nation was at war.

Now we find that we can't win this war we started. Soldiers and civilians alike are trapped in the proverbial briar patch, unable to move around safely in a country that the warmongers thought would be easy to conquer and then rebuild.

There is no way to overstate how profoundly wrong they were.

It is now well established that the reasons for the war evaporated as fast as the administration could create them. KnightRiddder has an article on the lack of post-war planning which is discussed by Steve Soto at the Left Coaster. Bob Herbert goes on to describe how bad the situation is in Iraq.

Our troops continue to die but we can't even identify the enemy, which is why so many innocent Iraqi civilians - including women and children - are being blown away. The civilians are being killed by the thousands, even as the dreaded Saddam Hussein is receiving first-class health care (most recently a successful hernia operation) from his captors.

Last week, in a story that read like a chapter from an antiwar novel, we learned that members of an Army Reserve platoon were taken into custody and held for two days after they refused to deliver a shipment of fuel to Taji, a town 15 miles north of Baghdad. They complained that the trip was too dangerous to make without an escort of armored vehicles. Several of the reservists described the trip as a "suicide mission."

The military said that was an isolated incident, but there is evidence of growing dissatisfaction among the troops, many of whom feel they are targets surrounded by hostile Iraqis -insurgents and ordinary civilians alike - in a war that lacks a clearly defined mission.

As we have said here before, this is deja vu all over again, a desert Vietnam, a quagmire in the sand. It doesn't matter who is elected in November, the U.S. will withdraw from Iraq next year. If Bush wins it will be called a "great victory" if Kerry wins it will be called a defeat. The situation will be the same in any case, a failed state that is a haven for terrorists. Thousands will have died for Bush's holy war and the world and the country will be much less safe.