Playing Games With America

Secretary of State Rice said on Fox (and a couple other real news channels) recently that significant reductions of American troops in Iraq are "entirely possible" in the coming year. What does this mean really? On the surface, it seems like she's saying that we will most probably see this significant reduction in the time frame she mentions. But look at what those two words "entirely possible" mean: if it's possible, just a 1 in a trillion chance, that a meteor could smash into earth in the next year, you could also argue that such an event is "entirely possible", because their is a possibility. The conditions of the troop reduction "possibility" are that Iraqis can control themselves, and their police and armed forces are ready to go. A year seems like pretty quick recovery time from near civil war. No need to make any binding commitments Ms. Rice.

Here's something else: her case for being able to bring these troops home is what Gen. Casey (the top guy in Iraq) told congress in January, which is that if we could bring down the American presence in Iraq we'd fuel the insurgency less. Maybe this news hasn't reached the White House yet, but there has been a huge increase in sectarian violence since then, which has the makings of a civil war (I've already mentioned this). I can't say for sure, but it seems that if we were to take more than a couple of soldiers out of Iraq now, the Shias and Sunnis would just go at it until all the Sunnis were dead. That might stabilize the area, but that's a lot of dead people.

So why are we being to subjected to all these lies? Well, in less than eight months, there's going to be an election. If the republicans can't turn the situation around in Iraq (or at least convince enough Americans that they have), they'll do badly. It's simple election year politics. Don't get me wrong, democrats do it too, but they would be suicidal to make such a huge promise when it's pretty obvious they can't keep it. So why are republicans (or the White House at least) doing it? My guess would be that they know they're going to lose badly if they can't pull something big, so they're going all in (to borrow a poker term). They don't really care that they can't possibly deliver what they're promising you. Republicans are just playing games with you and me.