Iraqi MPs Declare US Security Plan a Failure

After the recent suicide bombing inside Iraq's Green Zone Iraqi MP's are now openly saying that Bush's new security plan is a total failure.

"Someone can walk into our parliament building with bombs. What security do we have?" said Saleh al-Mutlaq, who heads the Sunni National Dialogue Front in the Iraqi parliament.

"The plan is 100% a failure. It's a complete flop," said Khalaf al-Ilyan, one of the three leaders of the Iraqi Accordance Front, which holds 44 seats in parliament. "The explosion means that instability and lack of security has reached the Green Zone."

It's very hard to argue with their logic. The breach of the supposedly secure Green Zone proves that the violence is spreading, not that it is being contained as the Bush camp argue.

The Bush camp base their entire argument on the fact that one type of violence in Iraq - deaths from roaming death squads - is on the decrease, despite the fact that this decrease is only happening in Baghdad and deaths from suicide bombings and other methods remains just as high.

"If you add it all up, I don't see how you can conclude the surge is working," said Kenneth Katzman, an Iraq expert at the Congressional Research Service. "The confluence of evidence is that things are falling apart rather than coming together."

The supposed "success" of the surge really does come down to how one views this campaign. And the Bush camp are using the same slightly backward logic that they have been employing ever since they invaded Iraq.

It goes along the lines of, "the nearer we are to achieving victory, the more the insurgents will fight". It's a bizarre construct which allows it's proponents to view increasing violence as a form of progress, with victory always just over the next hill. They actually argue that the worse things get, the better the war is going for us.

Am I the only person to find that logic... well, illogical. Because there is surely also the possibility that, if things are getting worse, then this could be because we are losing.

And if places that have been traditionally considered secure like the Green Zone are now being breached, doesn't that signify a radical advancement for the other side?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cautioned that it was too early to pass judgment. "I don't think anyone expected that there wouldn't be counterefforts by terrorists to undermine the security presence," Rice said.

Rice's answer strikes me as rather trite, just as there is something rather trite in the entire attitude of the Bush administration towards this conflict. It has become so central to all of their reputation's that one can't help feel that they need to take a reality check somewhere along the line.

If you can't concede something so basic - as the enemy managing to attack you were you have been traditionally safe - as an advance for that enemy, then how can you expect to be taken remotely seriously when you make other statements?

Rice's explanation that this was "not unexpected" appears to bring forward more questions than it answers. If it was "not unexpected", in the most secure zone in Iraq, then how was it possible that it could have taken place? By taking the element of surprise out of the equation, she rather undermines her own point that things aren't getting worse in Iraq rather than better.

For if it was expected, then it should have been prevented. But then, logic has long ago ceased to matter to the supporters of this particular enterprise.

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Tags: Iraq war, Iraq parliament, bombing, suicide bombing, Condaleezza Rice, Bush