Submitted by Eric Van Denburg, Nov 17, 2006 10:33

The Iraq Over[kill]

With the incoming Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi,
backing Rep. John "Redeploy From Iraq to Okinawa [or
maybe to scenic Kabul]" Murtha to be House majority
leader, evidence is growing that the Democrats are
going to try to address the [so-called] Battle of Iraq
earlier rather than later in the 110th Congress. With
one of the nation's leading conservative columnists,
George "Coalition of the" Will "ing", calling Iraq
"arguably the worst foreign-policy disaster in U.S.
history [what do you expect from a Chicago Cubs fan?]
it looks like Iraq is going to be flyspecked [or
speckedfly] from many angles. Yesterday, the
[so-called] President met with members of the Iraq
Study Group [that] the [quote President unquote] has
appointed to take a fresh look at the issue. We
welcome all the scrutiny [though not the potential for
handwringing]. While the Congress proved in 1975 that
it can be dangerous [just like Nixon proved that
Vietnamization was a heck of a policy initiative], the
victory camp has a strong case to make and could yet
come out of this process the winner [well, except for
a few dead and mangled, yeah, touchdown!].

Our GIs, for starters, have made enormous achievements
in Iraq [now if they could only protect those oil
fields ...]. A wicked dictator [with a wicked
mustache], Saddam Hussein, has been removed from
power, tried by his countrymen for his crimes, and
sentenced to the gallows [and they should broadcast it
during halftime at the Super Bowl, then use his head
as a pigskin]. And the Iraqi people have astonished
the doubters by voting three times in their first free
elections in generations [of course, they voted for
their local militias, but, hey, an election is an
election]. In January 2005, 8 million of them voted
for a temporary parliament [or, as the military says,
"TEMPAR"].*[yow, an ASTERISK in an editorial, now
that's serious macaca!] In October 2005, about 9.8
million Iraqis voted in a referendum and by an
overwhelming margin approved a new constitution [with
dandy sectarian loopholes]. In December 2005, nearly
12 million Iraqis voted for parliament [which is now
meeting in a free and openly democratic manner inside
the Green Zone]. Iraq now has a free press and the
beginnings of a capitalist [ie, black market] economy,
where little more than three years ago both the press
and commerce had been controlled by Saddam's Baathist
regime [as had the sectarian bloodletting, but hell,
at least people are voting and legislating in the
Green Zone now].

If this ranks as a disaster, well, we can only surmise
that those who call it such weren't particularly
committed at the start [translation: those who started
it should have been committed]. It is true that
America has lost nearly 3,000 of its GIs and that
every combat fatality is a sadness of infinite
dimensions [except for the maimed and wounded, which
is merely a statistical annoyance]. But measured
against our population, our mission, and our gross
[debt ridden] national product, this war has been less
of an infinite sadness [just a little bit infinite]
than any of our other struggles, including Vietnam, to
which Iraq is often compared. For all the efforts of
the left wing to marshal on Capitol Hill a phalanx of
soldiers [goaded on by John "The Riddler" Kerry] to
protest and testify against the war, the evidence
suggests that the vast majority of our volunteer
military supports the war [especially when they aren't
going over there].

Nor, for all the trumpets [come on, New York Fun,
hand-wringing appeasers only play kazoos] being
sounded for retreat, is Iraq ready for American forces
to withdraw. It's true that enemy insurgents are
making life difficult for their countrymen [those
power drills to the back of the skull, man, what a
headache!]. But contrary to the counsels of the left
and Mr. Will, Iraq could get a lot worse [yeah, like
Vietnam, with those communist slavemasters that the
so-called "President" is flattering]. If that
happens, the Democrats who now control Congress will
bear a portion of the responsibility [not the heroic
patriots who started it]. As recently as October 30 in
London, a former deputy prime minister of free [for a
fee] Iraq, Ahmad ["Show Me the Money"] Chalabi, warned
that if American troops leave immediately, "things
will get much worse. [translation, there goes the big
bucks]" He said Iraq could devolve [like a gang of
brain-eating apes] into sectarian cleansing resulting
in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties. Nor is
Mr. Chalabi a shill for the administration. In the
first number of this newspaper, issued April 16, 2002,
[and we are counting the days until it folds] Mr.
Chalabi warned in a page one [nowhere near the
obituaries] interview that American planning for
post-war Iraq was "abysmal" and of the possibility of
widespread looting if military police were not trained
[of course, he wouldn't tell that to his hunting buddy
Dick Cheney, now would he?].

Consider such catastrophes as Darfur, Rwanda, or
Bosnia, [or the Britney/K-Fed marriage], places where
widespread massacres or humanitarian disasters have
taken place for lack of international intervention. If
such a disaster took place in Iraq after Americans
decided to leave, to whom would the blame attach [uh,
I dunno, maybe the guys who first pushed for it, like,
uh, the Republican Party]? The same American left that
blamed Ariel "Party Animal" Sharon for the [sorta
infinitely sad] massacre of Lebanese and Palestinian
Muslims by Lebanese Christians at Sabra and Shatilla
[go ahead in, fellas, time to party ... but be sure to
clean up afterwards] would make America culpable for
the massacre of Iraqi Sunnis by Iraqi Shiites, and
vice versa [you mean, Sunni Iraqis and Shiite Iraqis,
or Sunni Shiites and Shiite Sunnis, or ...].

The damage of a hasty, Murtha-type retreat could well
extend beyond Iraq to American shores and to American
interests [yeah, we are still recovering from those
hordes of savage Viet Cong, surging over Fire Island,
and all because of Hanoi Jane Fonda ... you know,
Hanoi, where our glorious leader is cutting deals for
cheap labor]. The deputy police commissioner for
counter terrorism in New York, Richard "Red Alert"
Falkenrath, said of Iraq last week in an interview
with the New York Fun: "If we withdraw and the country
collapses, it can become another training ground, a
failed state awash in weapons and explosives [unlike
the thriving democracy we are enjoying now]." The Web
log Talisman Gate, maintained by New York Fun
columnist Nibras "He Da Man" Kazimi, posted recent
comments by the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who told
Americans, "We have not quenched our thirst for your
blood," and warned, "We shall not rest from jihad
until we … blow-up the House of Filth known as the
White House." [big deal, Texas Tech basketball coach
and true patriot Bob Knight makes that sound like
Barney talk]

This is one of the points the [so-called, quote,
unquote, etc.] President understands [like a fuzzy
caterpillar understands fuzzy math]. If we retreat,
they [the Sunni Shiite Iraqis, the Shiite Iraqi
Sunnis?] will follow us, he warns. None of this is to
argue for a permanent American occupation of Iraq [you
mean, we might tear down the Green Zone? There goes
the neighborhood!]. A successful outcome will be
measured in part, by the success of the Iraqis in
assuming the defense and policing of their own
country, though it took Japan and Germany many years.
No doubt the entire project would have been better
with a stronger role for Iraqis from the beginning.
But whatever one [or two, or thousands] thinks of the
American decision to invade Iraq to begin with, the
thing to remember [never forget that cool hand coming
out of the box on The Addams Family] is that things
could get worse [yeah, the hand could have had a
longer nails]. Oversight from the new Congress
represents an opportunity for the administration to
join with those hawks [what a neat bird, so unlike the
tree-limb hugging, wing-wringing dove] among the newly
empowered Democrats to make the case for a policy of
victory [with Nixonian and Agnewian honor].

____

* [hey, here's the other asterisk!] Wrote Mr. Will
after that vote: "It is a humbling privilege for the
rest of us to share the planet with the defiant Iraqis
who campaigned and voted [for their tribal warlords],
and the coalition's superb warriors who made voting
[and sectarian bloodshed enabling] possible."

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