Needlenose

Back in ’03 I believed that all parties in the recently fractured Iraq would want to keep us around, the newly empowered Shi’ites in the ‘Coalition Government’ for protection, and the coalition of the Evil-Doers (former Baathists and jihadis) to have easy access to Americans to kill.  I posited that it wouldn’t take much for the latter to keep U.S. troops mired in the Quicksand of Iraq through acts of terror or sabotage.

Obama’s decision to close up shop in Iraq is already being sorely tested by the recent Coalition of the Evil-Doer’s massive terror attack, and of course is already being second-guessed by our home-grown warmongering reactionaries.  Of course if it were up to them, we would still be fighting in Vietnam.

Given that an overwhelming majority of Americans are pretty tired of hearing about a war that was only supposed to last a couple of weeks is now almost 9 years old, and that most of them probably don’t really care how many Iraqis die, the Coalition of the Evil-Doers will need to bump up the game and threaten the oil supply to keep around the American piñata – or in the words of Frank Herbert: “The Spice must flow!”

Pssst…is the chopper ready to go?

Looks like Swopa’s recent prediction of a pre-election 2004 troop withdrawal from Iraq was on the money. I can’t imagine that it will be so easy, though; lots of folks in Iraq want the U.S. to stay, including some of the terrorists, who would be bummed to lose their American pinata just as the party got going.

So while King George the Witless spouts crap like “We’re going to prevail. We’ve got a good strategy to deal with these killers,” (huh? more prancing on the old flight deck wearing a cod-piece?), the situation on the ground continues to go downhill.

Elements within the so-called Coalition Government anxious to keep the Americans around can drag out the nation-building process (let’s see if they meet those deadlines). And the terrorists? I imagine that a few attacks on Saudi or Kuwaiti oil pipelines or refineries would do the trick. Or more hits on members of the puppet government. Who can say? But I can’t imagine it will be too hard to keep us around – after all, we Yanks ain’t quitters:

“Two years into the war on terror, the will and resolve of America are being tested, in Afghanistan and in Iraq,” he said. “Again, the world is watching. Again we will be steadfast; we will finish the mission we have begun, period.”