US marine corps calls up reserves as army feels the pressure of fighting on two fronts

The neo-cons have continued to insist that Iraq is showing signs of continuing improvement and have attacked as naysayers anyone who has questioned that assessment or George Bush's insistence that the war in Iraq is being won.

Now their own actions undermine their earlier optimism with George Bush introducing what amounts to a back door draft by forcing the US marine corps to call up its reserves for compulsory service in Iraq and Afghanistan as they are unable to find enough volunteers.

This is quite a significant change in US plans as they had originally hoped to reduce troops in Iraq from 130,000 to 100,000 by the end of this year. However, the sheer scale of sectarian violence has rendered these plans as unworkable. This is a much more accurate indication of what direction the war is heading in than George Bush and Tony Blair's almost continual optimism.

The marines' involuntary call-up, seen as a "back-door draft" by Pentagon critics, is the first since the start of the Iraq war, and will begin in a few months when a first batch of up to 2,500 reservists will be summoned back to active service for a year or more. The army has already sent 2,200 reservists back to the front, of which only about 350 went voluntarily.

"All that happy talk about getting down to 100,000 by the end of this year, that's not on the cards for this year," said John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military thinktank in Washington.

"Instead, they might bump up the numbers even further ... They are going to do whatever it takes to keep a lid on this damn thing in Baghdad, because if there's anywhere it's going to fly off the handle it's in Baghdad. And if ethnic cleansing takes on a life of its own, people in this town are going to say it's time to leave."

Gary Anderson, a retired marine colonel and now a Pentagon adviser on Iraq, said the call-up reflected the strain the Iraq war was putting on the force. "We're in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and we still have commitments in the Far East. I think if Iraq was the only game in town, it would be different," he said.

"Quite frankly some of these guys have gone to Iraq two or three times, and they feel they've done their bit ... It's going to put a strain on them. Both people and equipment are getting worn out. There's an old saying - long wars ruin armies, and I think that's an accurate statement."

Jack Reed, a Democratic senator on the armed services committee, said the marines and army were "stretched perilously thin and the equipment is seriously degraded".

There are further indications that the Bush regime is at last waking up to the reality of the nightmare the have made for themselves in Iraq. Peter Baker of the Washington Post has noticed that, during his recent press conference, there is one word that has been dropped from the Bush lexicon: Progress.

Of all the words that President Bush used at his news conference this week to defend his policies in Iraq, the one that did not pass his lips was "progress."

For three years, the president tried to reassure Americans that more progress was being made in Iraq than they realized. But with Iraq either in civil war or on the brink of it, Bush dropped the unseen-progress argument in favor of the contention that things could be even worse.

The shifting rhetoric reflected a broader pessimism that has reached into even some of the most optimistic corners of the administration -- a sense that the Iraq venture has taken a dark turn and will not be resolved anytime soon. Bush advisers once believed that if they met certain benchmarks, such as building a constitutional democracy and training a new Iraqi army, the war would be won. Now they believe they have more or less met those goals, yet the war rages on.

While still committed to the venture, officials have privately told friends and associates outside government that they have grown discouraged in recent months. Even the death of al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq proved not to be the turning point they expected, they have told associates, and other developments have been relentlessly dispiriting, with fewer signs of hope.

I have always thought the Bush regime's basic mistake in Iraq was to believe that they would ever be greeted as liberators. The UN sanctions - which were enthusiastically supported by the US and the UK - were responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi babies. The idea that the Iraqis had such short memories that their rage over our actions would have subsided, or that they blamed the need for sanctions on Saddam, was always a fanciful vanity.

This whole adventure was doomed from the outset. However, what we are now witnessing from Bush is not a "road to Damascus" moment rather than a fallback position from a "progress is being made" argument that is impossible to sustain, especially with the mid term elections just around the corner.

Christopher F. Gelpi, a Duke University scholar whose research on public opinion in wartime has been influential in the White House, said Bush has little choice.

"He looks foolish and not credible if he says, 'We're making progress in Iraq,' " Gelpi said. "I think he probably would like to make that argument, but because that's not credible given the facts on the ground, this is the fallback. . . . If the only thing you can say is 'Yes, it's bad, but it could be worse,' that really is a last-ditch argument."

However, with the entire success or failure of his Presidency certain to be defined by the Iraq war, there is no chance of Bush ever admitting the scale of defeat that he is facing. He will hang on grimly no matter what happens in the hope of passing this problem to his successor, hoping that some of the blame will also be passed along the line.

It's not an honourable position, but then this is not an honourable administration.

Tags: Iraq, war, Bush, US, Back, door, draft, marine, corps, reserves, call, up, volunteers