"The American Era in the Middle East Has Ended"

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/whitney11032006.html


"The American Era in the Middle East Has Ended"
Baghdad is Surrounded


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That's right; we're spending a whopping $1 trillion a year for a war that we're losing!

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"More than 500,000 weapons were turned over to Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior since the American invasion including rocket-propelled grenade launchers assault rifles, machine guns and sniper rifles"only 12,128 were properly recorded. Some 370,000 of these weapons, some of which are undoubtedly being used to kill American troops, were paid for by U.S. taxpayers, under the Orwellian-titled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund."

In other words, we're handing over state-of-the-art weaponry to the men who are killing American troops and, yet, no one is held responsible? How does that work? Apparently, the buck never stops at the Rumsfeld War Department; it just gets passed along to until it lands on a swarthy-looking Middle Eastern fellow or perhaps a garrulous leftist railing against the war on his blogsite.

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Baghdad is surrounded and the predicament for American troops is increasingly tenuous. The battle is being lost on all fronts. So, what is Secretary Rumsfeld's response to these new and urgent developments?

Rumsfeld held a press conference in which he blasted his critics for "focusing too much on the bad news coming out of Iraq" and announced the launching of a new public relations campaign which will attempt to elicit greater support for the ongoing occupation. The Pentagon plans to "develop messages" to respond to the negative news-coverage and, as Rumsfeld said, "correct the record."

-snip-

Rumsfeld's plan for "a new kind of war" that depends on high-tech, laser-guided weaponry, massive counterinsurgency operations, and a submissive "embedded" media has fallen on hard times. The tremors can already be felt from Baghdad to Washington D.C. As Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) said in the November issue of Foreign Affairs, "The American era in the Middle East, the forth in the region's modern history, has ended." All that's left is to sweep up the pieces of a failed policy and head home.
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how many have already died today?

and tomorrow?

[BattyDem]

1. Baghdad is Surrounded?

Is the author just trying to make a point ... or is that actually true? (I know two guys stationed in Baghdad. :scared: )

[donsu]

2. I don't know - I'm wondering the same as you

nt