Post-Mortem

As the president continues to flog the debris and shattered remnants of what used to be a war, attempting to massage it back to life, Bob Woodward may have delivered the funeral oration for this dear, departed misadventure.

Woodward's first two books in his "Bush at War" series were flattering to the boy king. The most recent one, "State of Denial," emphatically is not.

Speaking last May Bush giddily predicted the war would be remembered as the time when "the forces of terror began their long retreat." Two days later a secret memo from the Joint Chiefs' intelligence division reported to the White House that "Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase current level of violence through the next year (2007)."

Woodward identifies and documents the four salient facts about the late, great Iraq War. First, there was never a war strategy or objective beyond terminating the Saddam Hussein regime; once that was done, the entire strategy has consisted of the happy chatter of public relations.

Item: In 2004, "Robert D. Blackwill, the NSC's top official for Iraq, was deeply disturbed by what he considered the inadequate number of troops on the ground there. He told (Natonal Security Advisor Condoleeza) Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, that the NSC needed to do a military review.

"If we have a military strategy, I can't identify it," Hadley said. "I don't know what's worse -- that they have one and won't tell us or that they don't have one."

Keep in mind, Hadley, who later replaced Rice as national security advisor, was giving vent to the same criticism as the war's detractors, who are constantly characterized as "objectively pro-terrorist" by people like Cheney.

Secondly, secret government interoffice memos have consistently referred to Iraq as a failed state for the past year and half.

Upon becoming secretary of state, Rice hired Philip D. Zelikow, an old friend, and sent him to Iraq to report back to her on conditions there. The resulting memo said in part, "At this point Iraq remains a failed state shadowed by constant violence and undergoing revolutionary political change." This was in February, 2005.

Third, Bush has been relying more and more as time goes by on Henry Kissinger for advice concerning the war, apparently on the assumption that what didn't work in Vietnam will work in Iraq. Kissinger has inexplicably been trotting out memos he wrote in 1969 as support for Bush's failed Iraq non-policy.

Fourth, Bush has lied habitually and repeatedly by saying commanders on the ground determine troop levels. Woodward's evidence on this topic is worth quoting at length:

"Vietnam was also on the minds of some old Army buddies of Gen. Abizaid, the Centcom commander. They were worried that Iraq was slowly turning into Vietnam -- either it would wind down prematurely or become a war that was not winnable

"Some of them, including retired Gen. Wayne A. Downing and James V. Kimsey, a founder of America Online, visited Abizaid in 2005 at his headquarters in Doha, Qatar, and then in Iraq.

"Abizaid held to the position that the war was now about the Iraqis. They had to win it now. The U.S. military had done all it could. It was critical, he argued, that they lower the American troop presence. It was still the face of an occupation, with American forces patrolling, kicking down doors and looking at the Iraqi women, which infuriated the Iraqi men.

"'We've got to get the fuck out,' he said."

Read all of Woodward's extensive book excerpt here. Thanks to Georgia10 at DailyKos.

Everybody knows the Iraq War is dead. Bush knows it, Rice knows it, Rumsfeld knows it, possibly even our delusional and schizoid vice president knows it. Their private despair contrasts gruesomely with their public happy chatter.

Therefore, it's past time to bury this moldering corpse of a lost war, which, despite having been dead over a year, continues to render Iraq a smoking, stinking ruin, and the U.S. the most hated country on earth since Nazi Germany.

To that end, it's important to skip work or school on Thursday, October 5, and take to the streets in one of the 114 demonstrations and marches happening nationwide, because George Bush has made clear he will never quit Iraq. That's why The World Can't Wait (to drive out the Bush regime).