[+/-] Next for Bush: Fallujah, Iran and the Draft

If Bush is reelected expect two foreign policy acts: (1) A deepening of American involvment in Iraq, starting with an attack on Fallujah; and (2) An attack on Iran.

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it - after the election. The signs are all there."

What a stupid idea. But then, W has never been known for his brains. According to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost.

Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost.... Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends.... This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."

General Hoare: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan. I see no exit. We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."

W Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute - and the top expert on Iraq there: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency... The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."

So with quagmire accomplished in Iraq, what's left to do? Hey! Let's distract everyone with another war! The Bush administration's warnings that it will not "tolerate" a nuclear-armed Iran have opened up a lively policy debate in Washington over the merits of military strikes against the Islamic republic's nuclear program. Analysts close to the administration say military options are under consideration.

Just fucking great. But not too surprising:

1. It's a matter of public record that the war with Iraq is largely the brainchild of a group of neoconservative intellectuals, who view it as a pilot project.
2. In August 2002 a British official close to the Bush team told Newsweek: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran."
3. In February 2003, according to Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria and North Korea.
4. Iran has made a strategic decision to confront American forces in Iraq's Shi'a heartland, rather than await an attack at a time and place of America's choosing.

If you don't yet believe that W will bring back the draft to accomplish his ends, then why is the government hiring staff for local draft boards?