Dr. Paul Craig Roberts goes ballistic again--and for good reason. (See below, my emphasis in red.) If nothing else, the "Iraq Study Group" has performed one important public service: that of spelling out what a catastrophe the entire Washington adventure in Iraq is...a catastrophe not just for Iraq and America, but for the whole Middle East. Ah, you say, that is obvious...what's the big deal?

It may be obvious to you and me, but President Bush and most of the American people are living in a parallel universe of ignorance, denial and distraction. By bringing reality into the picture, at least Bush and the rest of Washington will have to deal with it. In this respect, the 79 proposals of the ISG are secondary. Some of them could be totally wrong and impractical. The important thing is to recognize the enormity of the blunder. It is entirely possible now that nothing can be done to rectify the situation and that a full scale train wreck is in the offing.

Roberts quotes a Middle East expert, Anthony Sullivan, who states that the ISG Report "constitutes a massive repudiation of the policy of the Bush Administration." If so, then why did Dr. Condoleezza Rice not resign from the State Department on Friday? The first thing she could have done, after reading the ISG report, should have been to submit her resignation. The failure described therein is her failure. True, she has not been thought of as a "neocon", so her actions do not verge on being treasonous; nevertheless, she has been G.W. Bush's principal foreign policy advisor from the first day Bush and Cheney took over the White House in January of 2001.

Prior to that, Bush admitted he knew nothing about foreign policy. When Dick Cheney and his "neocon" playmates got Colin Powell fired as Secretary of State (after he had done much of their dirty work), Rice moved into Powell’s office. Life is beautiful. Judging by the nonsense she spouts in public, it is reasonable to assume that Rice has been feeding Bush a constant stream of inanities and falsehoods for years to advance the current foreign policy agenda, which policy is now deemed to be a disaster. It has been the blind leading the blind, as well as a mutual ego-pumping exercise.

Meanwhile in Tel Aviv, in the wake of the ISG analysis, the Frankenstein monster look-alike, PM Ehud Olmert, has gone out of his way to inform the world at large that "U.S. problems in Iraq are entirely independent of the controversy between us and the Palestinians". Oh, sure. I certainly can understand why Olmert would say that. Some "controversy" this subjugation of Palestine, some “problems” this meltdown in Iraq. The last thing Tel Aviv and America's Israel Lobby want is for the logical connection to be made between the Iraq fiasco and Israel's private agenda, which agenda is wholly responsible for propelling Washington into said fiasco in the first place.

You can bet your last dollar that 97% of the politicians in Washington, including first and foremost the front men Cheney and Bush themselves, will be frantically assisting Olmert to make sure that no connection is uncovered or perceived, because that connection is perfectly damning to everyone involved.

Reporting from Washington, the Israeli journalist, Ari Shavit, pointed out on April 9th, 2003 in the pages of Haaretz : "In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Elliott Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another...."

Allow me to add the name of another Zionist fanatic operating under the radar screen, David Wurmser, Cheney's "Middle East Advisor". Please understand that these "intellectuals" were not residing in an ivory tower on the outskirts of Washington. Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith were ensconced at the Pentagon, running the show. Abrams was at the White House, along with Wurmser, in charge of the Middle East desk at the National Security Council. You figure it out. Of course, Bush and Rice were out in front, doing what they do best. Witness the results.

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How Many More Will Die
For Bush’s Ego—And Israel?

By Paul Craig Roberts || December 8th, 2006 || Vdare.com

Last July in response to Bush's enabling of Israel’s gratuitous slaughter of thousands of Lebanese civilians and destruction of the country’s infrastructure, I wrote about "the shame of being an American." With the ongoing slaughter of our troops and Iraqi civilians in Bush’s war in Iraq, it is time to revisit that theme.

As the Iraqi civil war (euphemistically termed "sectarian violence") intensifies, both US and Iraqi casualties have sharply increased.  Thirty-five US troops have been killed in the first week of December.  Iraqis are dying at each other’s hands at about 100 per day, with many more wounded by bombs. Iraqi civilians continue to suffer at the hands of the US military, with the latest news being a US air strike that wiped out two families totaling 32 people.

The report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group has made it plain as day that the US is accomplishing nothing in Iraq except the destabilization of the entire Middle East. As Middle East expert Anthony Sullivan wrote in The National Interest  on December 8, 2006,  the ISG report "constitutes a massive repudiation of the policy of the Bush Administration."  The war is lost and cannot be retrieved militarily.  "Staying the course" is the path of total folly.

Yet, the White House Moron says that it is better for 100 US troops and 3,000 Iraqi civilians to die every month than for him to admit that he is wrong. To date the cost of Bush being wrong is 25,000 US casualties (dead and wounded) and approximately 650,000 dead Iraqis.  No one knows how many have been wounded. 

How many more will die before America drowns in the shame of the blood that is being shed for no other reason than the American people were so stupid as to elect a president who cannot admit that he made a mistake?  The same stupid American people elected a Congress that is too corrupt to impeach a president who is a liar, a war criminal, and a tyrant.  Instead, they are prepared to let Bush off with a mere "mistake," a courtesy denied to President Clinton.  Lying about sex is an impeachable offense. Lying about war is a mere mistake.

Are the American people, Congress, and the American Establishment going to let the death toll continue to mount day by day for the two more years it takes for Bush to become history? How do America’s military families feel about the loss of loved ones for no reason except President Bush cannot admit a mistake?  

How do the troops themselves feel about it? On December 8, a US Marine who has spent 7 months fighting insurgents in Anbar province answered this question on Lewrockwell.com as follows: "I’m sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. . . . How do you justify ‘sacrificing’ your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man’s power, and his ego." US Marine Philip Martin says he joined the Marines to protect the US Constitution, not to serve as an imperialist storm trooper.

I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard talking heads worrying about Bush’s "comfort level" with the Iraqi Study Group’s unanimous report. Bush’s comfort level?  What about the comfort level of the Iraqis and Americans who are losing family members while idiot talking heads worry about Bush’s comfort level with the facts!  

Try to imagine the impression the US gives to the rest of the world: The US cannot stop a war that is a catastrophe becoming a calamity because it would interfere with Bush’s comfort level.

This disastrous war is a testament to the irresponsibility of the American people and their elected representatives.  There were, of course, many dissenters.  But the majority were too lazy and irresponsible to take the trouble to be informed.  Most Americans allowed themselves to be deceived and emotionally manipulated.

The consequence of this failure of the American people has been brutal for countless people and their families in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon and for the thousands of American families who have suffered because Bush sent US troops on a fool’s mission. The American people are stained with the blood of innocents. Are they still not sufficiently angry with the president who used them for his crimes to demand his impeachment?  

As long as Bush remains in office, the neoconservatives will demand more wars.  In the current issue of Foreign Policy, ["Operation Comeback"] neocon Joshua Muravchik stridently insists that Bush bomb Iran before he leaves office. Muravchik urges his fellow neocon warmongers to "pave the way" for the bombing of Iran and to "be prepared to defend the action when it comes." 

As Middle East expert Anthony Sullivan writes, the neoconservatives are "fifth columnists" whose "real concern is not the United States but Israel."  Sullivan writes that "it is past time that neoconservatives and their movement be left to drown in the deepest reaches of the ocean." Amen!  And send Bush and Cheney and Rice with them.

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Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington;  Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.

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Copyright 2006 VDARE.com