Cha-ching, or why the surge is working
Paying Insurgents Not to Fight
By Paul Craig Roberts
19/02/08 “ICH” – – It is impossible to keep up with all the Bush regime’s lies. There are simply too many. Among the recent crop, one of the biggest is that the “surge” is working.
Launched last year, the “surge” was the extra 20,000-30,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq. These few extra troops, Americans were told, would finally supply the necessary forces to pacify Iraq.
This claim never made any sense. The extra troops didn’t raise the total number of U.S. soldiers to more than one-third the number every expert has said is necessary in order to successfully occupy Iraq.
The real purpose of the “surge” was to hide another deception. The Bush regime is paying Sunni insurgents $800,000 a day not to attack U.S. forces. That’s right, 80,000 members of an “Awakening group,” the “Sons of Iraq,” a newly formed “U.S.-allied security force” consisting of Sunni insurgents, are being paid $10 a day each not to attack U.S. troops. Allegedly, the Sons of Iraq are now at work fighting al-Qaeda. </em>
Ok, couple that with this, and you have trouble:
Anti-US Cleric’s Cease-Fire in Doubt
BAGHDAD – With deadly attacks against U.S. targets increasing around Baghdad, anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr raised the possibility Wednesday that he may not renew a six-month cease-fire widely credited for helping slash violence.
The cease-fire is due to expire Saturday, and there were fears, especially among minority Sunni Arabs, that the re-emergence of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia could return Iraq to where it was just a year ago _ with sectarian death squads prowling the streets of a country on the brink of civil war.</em>
Getting ever closer to an American defeat in the desert. That’s what you get for launching an illegal war of choice against a sovereign nation that never threatened us.
