Gloom

Reading the news is very depressing. It seems quite possible that our President is not only stupid but also rather unhinged. Seymour Hersh has yet another disturbing story on Iraq in The New Yorker.

Patrick Clawson, believed to be close to Cheney and Rumsfeld's thinking says:
He continued, “We want to draw down our forces, but the President is prepared to tough this one out. There is a very deep feeling on his part that the issue of Iraq was settled by the American people at the polling places in 2004.” The war against the insurgency “may end up being a nasty and murderous civil war in Iraq, but we and our allies would still win,” he said. “As long as the Kurds and the Shiites stay on our side, we’re set to go. There’s no sense that the world is caving in. We’re in the middle of a seven-year slog in Iraq, and eighty per cent of the Iraqis are receptive to our message.”
What a fool. Right now they might want our help to crush the Sunnis, but they will turn on us as soon as they feel strong enough.

Junior officers and generals tell that the war is going badly:
the number of attacks in Iraq has increased from a hundred and fifty a week to more than seven hundred a week in the past year
But they are afraid to speak publically.

About the President:
“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”


Americans committed a terrible blunder - I'm tempted to say crime - in electing this man, but so far most of the bill has been paid by a few thousands of American soldiers and the hapless Iraqis. I'm not sure that we will be able to say that five years from now.

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