Fixing something you broke by breaking it even harder.

Our beloved President announced his "new way forward in Iraq" this week. Something he started thinking about right after the November election in which he, according to his own words, received a good "thumping". I'm sure it was pure coincidence that he didn't seem to think there needed to be a "new plan" until then.

The new plan can be summarized as follows:
I'm not listening to anyone. I'll do what I want, because I'm the decider. neener neener neener.

The president totally ignores his people, the result of the election and the Iraq Study Group (Baker group) report with this plan:

• According to many political analysts the Iraq war was the #1 reason for the huge loss of republicans in the November election.
• According to an AP poll Seventy percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq. Just 35 percent of Americans think it was right for the United States to go to war, another record low in AP polling and a reversal from two years ago when two-thirds of Americans thought it was the correct move. Other polls showed a similar result.
  
• The Iraq Study Group Report stated: “The United States should immediately launch a new diplomatic offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region. This diplomatic effort should include every country that has an interest in avoiding a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq's neighbors.” Instead the president chose to chide Iran and Syria in his speech again: "These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq." Not a very good start for diplomacy if you ask me.
  

Sending 21,000 additional troops into Iraq will bring the amount of troops to the same level they were 2 years ago. Oh yeah, we were doing sooooo much better back then.
A defense official said that the 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, would move first into Iraq under Bush's plan. The brigade, based at Fort Bragg, NC, is now in Kuwait and poised to head quickly into the country.

Local Bush lapdog Robin Hayes supports the "surge" of course:

"The Iraqis themselves need to step up their commitment to securing their own country," he said, "and (I) want to see a plan that uses our troops to ensure this happens at a faster pace."

How are you going to motivate someone to work harder by doing the work for them?

The real reason for this "plan" to me seems to stretch this clusterf@*# out into 2008 and leave the clean up for Bush's successor.

There was also a very remarkable sentence in Bush's speech:

"Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship."

No ceremony on the deck of a battleship..hmm..what does that remind me of?? oh, I know, this one maybe? :

The reason we went to Iraq in the first place was to punish the ones responsible for 9/11, take out all the WMD's of Saddam, spread democracy in Iraq. Until we ourselves get democracy by having a president who listens to his people, I don't think we need to try and spread that principle anywhere else.
The American body count stands at 3,018 and there's no end in sight. Happy New Year!