Support the Troops: Get Out

It's a very unhappy Memorial Day, with 103 U.S. soldiers killed this month and three days to go. At this rate, we may hit 4000 dead by the end of October. Total wounded, by the way, is up to 25,242.

Glenn Greenwald had a great piece on Saturday on the myth of "Supporting the Troops" by supporting the Bush/Cheney Administration's bankrupt-from-beginning failed war policy. Greenwald's post is driven by a post-mortem on the Democratic cave-in last week, but it's important to sift through for the future debates.

After all, more and more, the troops want us out as well (NY Times):

With few reliable surveys of soldiers’ attitudes, it is impossible to simply extrapolate from the small number of soldiers in the company. But in interviews with more than a dozen soldiers in this 83-man unit over a one-week period, most said they were disillusioned by repeated deployments, by what they saw as the abysmal performance of Iraqi security forces and by a conflict that they considered a civil war, one they had no ability to stop.

They had seen shadowy militia commanders installed as Iraqi Army officers, they said, had come under increasing attack from roadside bombs — planted within sight of Iraqi Army checkpoints — and had fought against Iraqi soldiers whom they thought were their allies.

“In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war,” said Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described “conservative Texas Republican” and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. “Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.”

Meanwhile, CBS Chief Foreign Correspondent, Lara Logan, returned to Iraq after a six week breather, and finds it markedly worse than when she left it:

Schieffer: "What's your assessment at this point, is it better, worse, or about the the same as when you left?"

Logan: "Well, I can tell you Bob, I've only been gone for about six weeks and just the drive from the airport into Baghdad itself was really visually disturbing. You could sense there is a dramatic change in the feeling in the city itself. It looks like a wasteland. The drive really reminded me of something out of Armageddon."

I'm thinking, the Bible story or the movie?

Not only that, but the war has indeed turned out to be one big training camp/university for terrorism (NY Times again):

Estimating the number of fighters leaving Iraq is at least as difficult as it has been to count foreign militants joining the insurgency. But early signs of an exodus are clear, and officials in the United States and the Middle East say the potential for veterans of the insurgency to spread far beyond Iraq is significant.

Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, general director of the Internal Security Forces in Lebanon, said in a recent interview that “if any country says it is safe from this, they are putting their heads in the sand.”

That's right; we're fighting them over there so that we will have to fight them over here.

Heckuva job, Bushie.