Nation's disconnect from Bush administration crimes, incompetene, corruption reaching critical mass....

Bombshells, Blackguards and General Breakdown
P. M. Carpenter
March 03, 2007
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2007/03/bombshells_blac.html


Incompetence, neglect, profligacy, isolation, malfeasance, even a textbook psychosis of clinical disconnect -- all are reaching critical mass at government's highest levels. Every day, it seems, we read another disclosure of scandalous failure. Taken separately, they're bad enough. Lump them together and one wonders just how much longer the nation can endure, how much more it can tolerate.

The latest -- merely the latest in this accelerating implosion -- is that the Bush administration has permitted the Army National Guard and Reserves to fall to 12 percent readiness. The "12" is no typo. Should a natural catastrophe strike, oh, let's say Alabama, the Guard would find itself without "trucks, Humvees, generators, radios, night-vision goggles and other gear that would be critical for responding to a major disaster," not to mention a "terrorist attack or other domestic emergency," reports a congressional commission.

The reason for this deplorable state of readiness is, of course, the administration's singular fixation on Iraq, which is sucking all the material oxygen from anything and everything unrelated to its civil war, but profoundly relevant to the war on insecurity and unpreparedness at home.

Accordingly the administration has already launched roughly half its projected number of new "joint security stations" in Baghdad, part of its sixth stab at pacifying the capital city and in direct opposition to what Congress wants, its generals want, the Iraqis want and the American people want. Its obstinance, however, is peddled as leadership.

American soldiers are fanning out from small, vulnerable outposts, charged with somehow predistinguishing nervous civilians from homicidal militants, insurgents or common criminals. Meanwhile our "friends," the Iraqi security forces, "are kept out of briefing sessions, largely because the Americans are suspicious that information will be passed on to" ... see aforementioned list.

What is daily American life like under these circumstances? For just one U.S. battalion in western Baghdad, insurgents recently "blasted rocket-propelled grenades at an Iraqi-guarded checkpoint," followed that with a "barrage [of] small-arms fire," "then detonated two car bombs when American troops rushed to respond," then, for good measure, lobbed "two mortar rounds ... about 50 yards outside another outpost the battalion had set up." And all in one day.

"I guess it is a little scary," remarked 22-year-old Army private, Peter Lahoda.

One need not wonder why he finds it so, since he made the comment "as he gripped an M240 belt-fed machine gun in a turret that has been shot at three times from the street below."

Sorry to ruin your day even more, Pete, if that's possible, but here are a couple little items just as scary -- perhaps even scarier. Thursday our vice president, apparently living in some other cosmic time zone, said if we "withdrew before Iraqis could defend themselves, radical factions would battle for dominance." Yes, let's do keep a watchful eye out for that development.

And on a higher front, an online foreign-policy journal relates that "Those close to [the president] report that he remains convinced of success in Iraq and of how success will revive Republican political fortunes."

I am reminded of another little fellow who was convinced, right to the very end, that new jet fighters or FDR's death would prove to be the anticipated turning point in his war gone bad. Things didn't quite work out for him, though -- or for those he led.


I never dreamed I'd live to see the day in which I longed for my government to be marked only by incompetence, or only by neglect, or profligacy, or isolation, or malfeasance, or even a clinical disconnect. But these days, any one of these, by itself, would seem like Camelot.