Neo-Cons: "The Objective In Iraq Has Failed"

Now if only Clueless George and Tricky Dick would admit this we could change the course of the Iraq catastrophe created by Wolfowitz and the neo-con gang...

From The Independent (UK):

It has taken more than three years, tens of thousands of Iraqi and American lives, and $200bn (£115bn) of treasure - all to achieve a chaos verging on open civil war. But, finally, the neo-conservatives who sold the United States on this disastrous war are starting to utter three small words. We were wrong.

The second thoughts have spread across the conservative spectrum, from William Buckley, venerable editor of The National Review to Andrew Sullivan, once editor of the New Republic, now an influential commentator and blogmeister. The patrician conservative columnist George Will was gently sceptical from the outset. He now glumly concludes that all three members of the original "axis of evil" - not only Iran and North Korea but also Iraq - "are more dangerous than when that term was coined in 2002".

Neither Mr Buckley nor Mr Sullivan concedes that the decision to topple Saddam was intrinsically wrong. But "the challenge required more than [President Bush's] deployable resources," the former sadly recognises. "The American objective in Iraq has failed."

Read more Independent thinking.

Two writers in the Washington Post compare the costs of the march toward fascism in Putin's Russia to what the march toward fascism in Bush's America is costing us at home, including this opinion from Jim Hoagland:

U.S. public trust and confidence in the Bush White House are slipping toward the threshold of self-sustaining political disaster. A serious schism within the Republican Party itself is no longer unthinkable if the White House cannot demonstrate minimal competence in managing Katrina, Guantanamo, Dubai Ports World and other controversies.

Then this from Richard Cohen:

[T]he debacle [in Iraq] is a product of the same magical thinking that rejected global warming, stem cells and condoms alike. Underlying it all is a commitment to belief over fact, what should be over what is. It is evidenced in the insistence by Bush and others that "intelligent design" is, like evolution, worthy of teaching. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," Bush once said. Yes, and astronomy and astrology, too, and maybe chemistry and alchemy as well. It's a totally bogus proposition.

It was a chat about a religious moment that purportedly bonded Bush to Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader of increasingly dictatorial bent. It's as if Putin, an ex-KGB spy, read Bush's file -- and conned him. He knew Bush would rather believe than think -- and that others in the administration, who knew better, would simply go along.

Proof that General Peter "Iraq is Going Very, Very Well" Pace is, like the Bush administration, completely incompetent, outright lying, or some combination thereof:

Gunmen dressed in the uniforms of Iraqi policemen have stormed the offices of a private business in Baghdad, kidnapping up to 50 workers and bringing yet more chaos to a city in the grip of bloody sectarian conflict.
---
The US State Department yesterday acknowledged that 2005 had seen an increase in the numbers of reported killings by the Iraqi government. It also admitted that members of sectarian militias dominated many police units.

I wonder what that means for 2006 -- perhaps we will see the VERY last throes of the insurgency?

Q-Why isn't the simple, clear message "change the course" not yet the mantra of the opposition party?

A-There is no opposition party.