Iraqi government has made no progress, US concludes

As Bush argues that the US must continue it's action in Iraq, the White House has issued a report admitting that the Iraqi government have achieved progress in almost none of the benchmarks which the US set them as a precondition for continued US support.

The report suggests that over the last two months the Iraqis had advanced on just two of the 18 so-called "benchmarks" to that end. As such, the document underlines how difficult it will be for Mr Bush to convince Americans that political progress is being made in Iraq – claims already undermined by the murder, shortly before he spoke, of a prominent tribal leader in Anbar province allied with the US against al-Qa'ida.

However, despite insisting that there must be progress in Iraq to justify the price being paid in American lives, the Bush administration are now insisting that the war must continue despite almost no progress being made. This is the final proof that Bush's main interest is in handing this whole mess over to his successor.

Glenn Greenwald took up the theme of how conservative commentators are complicit in this blatant hypocrisy:

Just look at the Serious behavior of The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt in the last week alone to see how barren and worthless their words are. Last Sunday, Hiatt came closer than ever before to admitting failure in Iraq, ending his Editorial by asking:

If Iraqis are not moving toward political reconciliation, what justifies a continuing commitment of U.S. troops, with the painful sacrifices in lives that entails?

Thus, argued Hiatt, if the President cannot answer that question, and "if there is to be no political accord in the near future," then we must change our Iraq policy to "limit troop levels to those necessary to accomplish" very specific and more modest goals.

But today, Hiatt admits that what he said just five days ago were pre-conditions for supporting Bush's Iraq policy have not been met: "the president failed to acknowledge that, according to the standards he himself established in January, the surge of U.S. troops into Iraq has been a failure -- because Iraqi political leaders did not reach the political accords that the sacrifice of American lives was supposed to make possible."

Thus, by Hiatt's own reasoning on Sunday, it means that there is no justification for "a continuing commitment of U.S. troops." So does he embrace that conclusion? Of course not, because nothing he says matters; all that matters is that we stay in Iraq and do what the President wants:

Mr. Bush's plan offers, at least, the prospect of extending recent gains against al-Qaeda in Iraq, preventing full-scale sectarian war and allowing Iraqis more time to begin moving toward a new political order. For that reason, it is preferable to a more rapid withdrawal. It's not necessary to believe the president's promise that U.S. troops will "return on success" in order to accept the judgment of Mr. Crocker: "Our current course is hard. The alternatives are far worse."

This is how it goes endlessly with people like Hiatt: (1) If X does not happen, there is no justification for staying; (2) X has not happened; (3) we must stay. That is why nothing they say has any meaning. Staying in Iraq is always the only real goal. Everything else is just pretext and blather to continue to do that.

It is now blatant that the war supporters are complicit in Bush and Cheney's desire to simply never admit defeat in this conflict and hopefully hang on until the problem can be passed to a, probably, Democratic incoming administration.

None of the goals they have set the Iraqi government have been met and yet, still, they demand that the US must stay the course.

Not only that, but Bush is said to have stated privately that the US's "enduring relationship" with Iraq may, in fact, resemble the US actions towards Korea where the US maintained a presence for more than half a century.

As that realisation sunk in, Mr Bush's claim that both supporters and opponents of the war would be able to unite around the new strategy rang more hollow than ever

Mr Bush's claims of political progress by the Iraqis were described by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, as an "insult to the intelligence of American people."

There are certain knee jerk supporters of Bush who appear to see their task as to fashion arguments to support his current position, even if they have - in the past - made an exact counter argument to the one which they are now making.

And these same partisans have the gall to accuse others of "partisanship" when they disagree with the policies of The Great Leader.

It takes a certain kind of shamelessness to publicly argue for a position that you have previously denounced. And yet, that is where Bush supporters now find themselves. I have made the analogy before of the wife married to the serial adulterer, and it is again apt.

Like the wives of unfaithful husbands, the Bush supporters are always drawing lines in the sand as points beyond which they will tolerate no more. And when Bush marches over the line they simply redraw another one and make a similar pointless declaration about the limit of their patience.

The whole exercise is a lesson in subjugation. A willingness to subvert your own intelligence in order to keep believing in something which every fibre of your being tells you is false.

And yet, that very action now defines conservatism in the Bush era.

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