From CounterPunch
By Robert Fantina

While the Government Accounting Office (GAO) issues its pessimistic report on Iraq, and Mr. Bush puts on his smiley face and spins it to his advantage, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens continue to suffer, bleed and die. The war continues.

Mr. Bush has expressed encouragement by the GAO report, which showed three of eighteen benchmarks met. Republican members of Congress who voted against ending the war last spring said that some significant progress must be shown by the September report, or a real ‘new way forward’ (differing from Mr. Bush’s definition) must be implemented. Now, with Mr. Bush spinning the dismal news from the GAO into a very positive view, Pollyanna style, those same Republicans are being far less forceful than they were just a few months ago.

One can expect little action to end U. S. participation in the war before the inauguration of new Congress members and a new president in January of 2009, and would be naïve to expect too much even then. The pattern has been set: one president involves the country in a war on the pretext that it will protect U.S. interests from whatever the current threat is perceived to be. In the 1960s and 1970s it was Communism; today it is terrorism. After a time the futility of U.S. involvement will be evident to everyone, but U.S. leaders will ’stay the course’ in order to prove America’s ‘commitment to its allies’ and to ‘keep America safe.’ The death toll of Americans will climb steadily, as the death toll of Iraq’s citizens climbs astronomically. The reputation of the U.S. will deteriorate around the world, and the dissatisfaction of U.S. citizens will be manifested ineffectually at the ballot box and in the streets. The economy of the U.S. will be decimated, with its money being spent to achieve nothing. Finally, after a generation of suffering, some president will embrace the inevitable, and will use some incomprehensible logic to say that American goals in Iraq have been met, and will finally withdraw U.S. soldiers. Iraq’s now long-term civil war will explode by catastrophic proportions, until some kind of government, or possibly multiple governments, can be cobbled together.

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