What is so damn sweet about Bush delaying his big Iraq speech from December to January? Before he even speachifys on the surge idea, everyone on left, right, and center has already dumped all over it. Surge: Dead On Arrival.

Cheney needs to move his bunker to the American Enterprise Institute. There they can withstand the two year siege that will inevitably be launched against them. They can tread water for a year, rack up another 10,000 wounded and 1000 killed US soldiers, then hand their dirty diaper to the next guys.

Bonus excerpt for Greg Sargent...

North:

"McCain and Lieberman talked to many of the same officers and senior NCOs I covered for FOX News during my most recent trip to Iraq. Not one of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen or Marines I interviewed told me that they wanted more U.S. boots on the ground. In fact, nearly all expressed just the opposite: "We don't need more American troops, we need more Iraqi troops," was a common refrain."

(Recall) Lieberman:

"In Baghdad and Ramadi, I found that it was the American colonels, even more than the generals, who were asking for more troops."

Hmmm.

Adding to the Iraqi security forces is the worst thing we can do. They are not only compromised by sectarian politics, they are arming the sects courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. According the L.A. Times (Dec 10, 2006, Chivers) at least 4% of the weapons brought into the country to arm the forces go missing before they are distributed. They have no idea how many are stolen or sold by Iraqi police and army personnel. The weapons sold by the Iraqi personnel are "worth more than several months of pay" according to the article. The price of small firearms in the Iraqi black market has tripled since 2003.

There is no point in adding to an already out of control crisis. It's feeding the insurgency (and no doubt the families of those who sell them) not stopping it.

Even old besotted Ollie can see that the chimperor of his once invisible government and secret army is naked as a jaybird. We are bankrupt, folks, economically and especially in the leadership realm. Cheney and his mad neocon jacobin friends are playing a diferent game, tho. They are getting what they truly wanted - permanent war and chaos in SW Asia (and then on to Eurasia! Or is it Eastasia?) and the unravelling of the nation-state system. The end-game for the globalization cabal; a dictatorship of the global financier elite, while the billions of us mere peons smell the glove.

UA

The notion that the opposition of ANYONE to Bush's surge will deflect the chimp from this course flies in the face of 6 years of history. If the Decider has decided, it's a done deal, end of story. The Dems need to plot their response on the assumption that 20,000 more troops, more or less, are going to Iraq.