Iraq & The Month of Lowered Expectations

Well, those wild and crazy folks who are stage managing the Mess in Mesopotamia from the White House may be stoopid, but they sure aren't dumb, which is why April should be remembered as The Month of Lowered Expectations.

First, the Bush administration signaled that it doesn’t expect the Iraqi government to accomplish anything substantive any time soon (as opposed to not having done so in the past) because President Nouri Al-Maliki doesn't have the clout to meet U.S.-imposed benchmarks.

Translation: Al-Maliki is more interested in exerable actions like purging senior police officers who go after Shiite death squads than working to unite Iraqis, let alone kissing Bush's butt since the American gravy train shows no sign of pulling up stakes and leaving town.

Second, the oft-uttered term outcomes has been assigned to the war's ever growing semantic dustbin, joining such golden oldies as victory and democracy, and sooner or later, benchmarks, too. Replacing outcomes are outputs, which are defined in administration Orwell-speak as favorable activity of any kind.

Translation: Electricity is now available in some Baghdad nabes for five hours a day instead of four.

Third, training up the Iraqi Army is no longer a priority, which is a full-blown retreat from the president's oft-declared notion that the Americans can only stand down when the Iraqs stand up.

Translation: U.S. troops are stretched so thin that they can no longer be spared for anything but surging. Besides which, the Iraqi Army will never be capable of standing up, so why bother?

Fourth, the Iraqi government is no longer providing civilian casualty figures, while U.S. authorities are no longer counting car bombing victims.

Translation: No news is good news. And the best way to claim that there has been a drop in sectarian violence since the surge began is to eliminate a major catagory of victims from the body count.

Fifth, it was revealed that the rebuilding of Iraq is literally coming apart. Inspectors have found that in a sampling of eight big projects that the U.S. had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that has laid idle.

Translation: Even the good news in Iraq usually masks bad news. But how about that Halliburton share price?

Sixth, the White House is continuing its thus far fruitless search for a "war czar." In theory, this official would prod administration bigs into carrying out White House orders.

Translation: Bush has totally sucked as commander in chief. Stephen Hadley has totally sucked as national security advisor. Since Donny Rumsfeld is no longer available, they need someone to take the blame. Help!!!

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Was it only four years ago that Bush stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and smugly declared "Mission Accomplished"? It seems more like a lifetime, or rather the lives of the 3,351 Americans, 270 other coalition troops and a sh*tload of Iraqis who have perished during the 49 months of this fool's mission.

Is it possible that Bush and Vice President Cheney, while trying to lower expectations, continue to cling to the delusion that everything will come out just fine in the end? It sure seems that way.

Josh Marshall puts the state of the war in this depressing context:

"[R]right near the beginning of this nightmare it was clear the sole remaining premise for the war was false: that is, the idea that the Iraqis would freely choose a government that would align itself with the US and its goals in the region. As the occupation continued, anti-American sentiment -- both toward the occupation and America's role in the world -- has only grown.

"I would submit that virtually everything we've done in Iraq since mid-late 2003 has been an effort to obscure this fact. And our policy has been one of continuing the occupation to create the illusion that this reality was not in fact reality. In short, it was a policy of denial."

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Herewith our monthly numbers roundup, or what's left of it. (April totals where not censored are in orange; March totals are in black):

APRIL 2007 ROUNDUP

1,558 -- (1,808) Iraqis killed (*)
116 (84) -- U.S. troops killed

U.S. WAR-TO-DATE ROUNDUP
3,350 (3,264) -- Total killed to date

(The following statistics are through 3/28/07)
n/a (504) -- Died of wounds
n/a (7) -- Died while missing in action
n/a (2) -- Died while captured
n/a (398) -- Died in accidents
n/a (59) -- Died from illness
n/a (13) -- Died in homicides
n/a (100) -- Died of self-inflicted wounds
n/a (8) -- Undetermined
n/a (43) -- Pending classification
n/a (23,417) -- Total wounded

COST
(As of 4/31/07)
$421,607,000,000 ($413,025,000,000)

(*) Includes Iraqi Army personnel, security forces, national police and civilians. Sources: National Priorities Project, Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, Defense Manpower Data Center.