By Jim Mullins
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
October 27, 2006

President Bush finally displayed a chink in his armor of absolute certainty by admitting that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman "may be right" in equating public reaction to the carnage in Iraq and the response to the Tet offensive in Vietnam. But in the same ABC News interview, he falls back on his tired old refrain of blaming al-Qaida for "the stepped-up violence" and "trying to foment sectarian violence."

That al-Qaida is responsible for the stepped-up violence in Iraq is ridiculous. President Bush's pre-emptive war against a predominantly Muslim nation did not require any support from al-Qaida to energize the insurgency. "Shock and awe" destruction and Paul Bremer's firing of hundreds of thousands of bread winners -- thrusting them and their dependents into poverty -- while opening the economy to foreign carpetbaggers on sweetheart terms did the job very well.

And now, President Bush is said to be pushing Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's ouster over his hesitation in signing an IMF-imposed oil law that would turn over Iraq's oil reserves to mainly American oil companies on punitive terms even though Iraq's oil reserves are identified and the cost of extraction is little more than $1 a barrel.

Bush and his neocon advisers' arrogant rejection of the reasoned rationale by President George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, his national security adviser, for not deposing Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Gulf War have been vindicated, for the anarchy and chaos they predicted are there for all to see.

Both U.S. and British military commanders with extensive Iraq experience, leaks from the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan committee of 10 expert foreign policy advisers chaired by James Baker, the president's father's secretary of State, and indisputable facts on the ground suggest a radical change of policy will be necessary to even begin addressing, in Baker's words, a "helluva mess."

U.S. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, charged with lowering violence and sectarian cleansing in Baghdad, has admitted failure. Despite 17,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops being added on Aug. 7 in Operation Together Forward, sectarian expulsions and violent acts have increased by 22 percent.

On Oct. 14, British Chief of the General Staff Richard Gannett said that Britain "should get ourselves out soon because our presence exacerbates the security problem." When the U.K. handed over its base in al-Amara, it was looted and destroyed immediately -- a harbinger of things to come.

The news from Iraq is dire. U.S. deaths are rapidly approaching the 3,000 mark. A respected scientific poll has found that a median level of Iraqi violent deaths stands at half a million. Death squads are plying their grisly trade, with 3,000 and growing monthly victims -- many attributed to Ministry of Internal Security personnel, as in Saddam's time. More than a million Iraqis (who can afford it) have fled to Syria and Jordan.

James Baker's Iraq Study Group committee recommendations will be a hard pill for Bush to swallow. The long trip back to realism envisions a set timetable for withdrawal and engagement of neighboring Syria and Iran in the process among alternatives to present policy.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has proposed unconditional negotiations with Israel to settle their differences. After the recent Lebanese war, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter urged peace talks, while Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni appointed a "project manager" for Syrian contacts.

Iran pledged more than twice as much aid as the U.S. for Afghan reconstruction after the U.S. invasion. A 2002 offer by the Iranians to unconditionally negotiate all differences with the U.S. was rejected out of hand.

Bush opposes any negotiation or contact by us or Israel with either nation. "Staying the course" means war without end. Is that what the American people want? Or do they yearn for a peaceful end to the Iraqi debacle and healing of our relations with the rest of the world?

Jim Mullins is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., and a resident of Delray Beach.

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