According to today's Washington Post, the American death toll in Iraq has reached 3000.
Bush really is Le Président du Mort.
2752 dead in 9/11. 3000 Americans dead in Iraq. 356 Americans dead in Afghanistan. The Katrina death toll revised up to 1836, as bodies continue to be found. Countless Iraqis and Afghans dead. Poor, poor Americans. They don't deserve this, even if they brought it on themselves by re-electing Bush. And poor, poor Iraq and Afghanistan. They don't deserve this either.
In ancient times they would have concluded that the Gods looked on Bush with displeasure and would have hastily removed the Man with the Bad Karma from office. But we live in modern times, and there are still two years more to go before Bush steps down. Let's hope there is no earthquake or hurricane or international crisis this year to expose his incompetance again.
The newly-elected Democrats get sworn in this January and finally take power in Congress. I hope they have the courage to check Bush, force him to confront reality and to make a withdrawal from Iraq. We will have a new Prime Minister in Britain too this year. Let's hope he backs his natural allies in the Democratic Congress in their efforts to extricate America and us from this nightmare. If they succeed, 2007 will be a more successful year than 2006.
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I am afraid the gods you mention are those who loosen or tighten the purse strings, those whose influence is earthly not heavenly. And there is much of this influence both in Republicans and Democrats.
The interest of the Iraqi war was oil and the need for oil will also be present in the agenda of the Democratic party.
Sir David Frost (giant among men)once tricked Donald Rumsfeld into admitting that Iraq was all about oil. A bit daft really, surely Saddam was quite happy to sell his oil, it was the Americans (or the UN?) who imposed an embargo in the first place. I always had the impression that GWB did it out of personal animosity, possibly the worst reason of all, but there you go.
I'm more interested in extricating the Iraqis and Afghans from the nightmare than UK/US troops, who are a lot better protected than the natives. Solving that problem defies easy answers, but I'd be ashamed if we allowed national self-interest to (re-) enter the discussion.
In my opinion the problem now for a swift solution to the problem may be that the "forces of evil" want to split the country into three autonomous regions as a start, until further chances of turning them into independent countries. In an attempt to secure oil, at least part of that oil that would be staying under Kurdish control in exchange for the long-yearned-for independence of Kurdistan.
Mark, you are right, of course Saddam was happy to sell his oil, most of the oil producers are, (bit silly to refuse to sell, as it only means they can't exploit their resources).
However, what Rumsfeld and Bush may have had in mind was getting American companies a controlling interest in Iraqi oil production. I think they've actually achieved this - the oil concessions the Iraqi government have signed to American corps are outrageously cheap (certainly we in Britain wouldn't have signed such agreements regarding our own oil under either Labour or Tories).
Bloggers4Labour - We are not doing Iraq any good by remaining there - if we were, the Iraqi death toll wouldn't be rising so steeply, would it? Removing us from the equation might actually help Iraq. Cetainly the current Iraqi govt is operating death squads under the belief that they are protected by the coalition and can therefore do what they want. Remove the coalition and the playing field evens out and they might hesitate to send out death squads if they themselves faced retaliation. And so you would get a sort of peace based on mutual fear - not ideal, but better than the current situation.
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