Conditions in Iraq today are terrible, but they could become "way, way worse," as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, a career Foreign Service officer, recently told the New York Times.

Much worse only means that America will lose control of the oil and their colonial dreams with all the resplendent real estate that goes with owning a country.

Also what is at stake is the notion that America is the only superpower in the world and can do as it pleases.

AJ in DC at AMERICABlog wrote yesterday about Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the chief U.S. military spokesman feeding blatant lies to the press, calling al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) "the principal threat" to Iraqis.

This is, quite simply, completely and totally false.

Anyone who claims that the so-called al Qaeda in Iraq group is the "principal threat" to anything in that nation -- whether its citizens, the government, the political process, or any specific ethnic or sectarian group -- is either grossly ignorant of the realities of the Iraq war or blatantly lying. I honestly have no idea which it is in this case, though it's worth noting that the chief U.S. military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, was employed as a Special Assistant to the President prior to his current appointment.

Most reliable estimates put the fundamentalist/jihadist/al Qaeda actors in Iraq at around 3-5% of the total insurgency, with virtually no approximations exceeding 10%. I really cannot overstate how misleading it is to focus on al Qaeda when the driving forces of the conflict are average, native, very pissed-off -- but not religious fundamentalist -- Iraqis. The vast majority of the Sunni population is relatively secular (more secular, in fact, than Iraqi Shia), and even tacit support of jihadists is founded in anti-American sentiment. Even the sectarian violence is fueled more by localized conflicts between Sunni and Shia families, tribes, and militias than by al Qaeda.

The emergence of this fallacious "argument" was  descrbed back in early May by William Blum with:

This appears to be the last remaining, barely-breathing argument of that vanishing species who still support the god-awful war. The argument implies a deeply-felt concern about the welfare and safety of the Iraqi people. What else could it mean? That the US military can't leave because it's needed to protect the oil bonanza awaiting American oil companies as soon as the Iraqi parliament approves the new written-in-Washington oil law? No, the Bush administration loves the people of Iraq. How much more destruction, killing and torturing do you need to be convinced of that? We can't leave because of the violence. We can't leave until we have assured that peace returns to our dear comrades in Iraq.

To better understand this argument, it helps to keep in mind the following about the daily horror that is life in Iraq:

     It did not exist before the US occupation.

     The insurgency violence began as, and remains, a reaction to the occupation; like almost all insurgencies in occupied countries -- from the American Revolution to the Vietcong -- it's a fight directed toward getting foreign forces to leave.

What will fix Iraq is not "doing" something.

What will fix Iraq is "not doing" something.

these people (brooks, hiatt, et al) have been wrong, on everything, for years now. if i had their track record at work, i'd have been fired. clearly, i should be employed by the nyt's and wp, where even delusions of mediocrity aren't necessary to bring in a fat paycheck.