Americans are thoroughly familiar with the debate about supporting our troops through adequate funding. It will be called to the forefront again as Congress debates Senator Kennedy's proposed legislation that will deny the President the authority to use the funds necessary to commit more troops to Iraq without specific approval of Congress.  The anti-war movement is being accused of not supporting the troops in their campaign to "de-fund" the war and bring them home now.  

From a funding perspective, who is supporting the Iraqi troops America needs to stand up so ours can come home? According to the Iraq Study Group report our "military priorities in Iraq must change" to make one of the highest priorities the training, equipping, advising of Iraqi security forces. The much celebrated bipartisan report that Bush has essentially ignored explains that the Iraqi security forces:

"cannot carry out their missions without adequate equipment. Congress has been generous in funding requests for U.S. troops, but it has resisted fully funding Iraqi forces. The entire appropriation for Iraqi defense forces for FY 2006 ($3 billion) is less than the United States currently spends in Iraq every two weeks. ... They [Iraqis] lack the ability to sustain their operations, the capability to transport supplies and troops, and the capacity to provide their own indirect fire support, close-air support, technical intelligence, and medical evacuation."  

Not fully funding the Iraqis with the equipment for the mission they are supposed to take over from us seems to be a major reason why our troops are still in Iraq. It undermines the progress Bush has been boasting about for almost two years. The failure to fund his own strategy seems to be a conscious decision by the Bush administration that has put forth every budget request that Congress has approved.  

Perhaps the administration and Congress don't trust what the Iraqis will do with the funds and equipment we provide. There's been plenty of evidence that give rise to question the loyalties of some Iraqi units. With more than half of the Iraqi people claiming to support attacks against U.S. troops, strong suspicions that weapons might be siphoned off and delivered to the militias and other resistance groups seems well justified.  

Yet how can we expect the Iraqi forces that supposedly now double the U.S. troops there to succeed on less than 4% of the budget for our troops? Shouldn't they expect the same quality of weapons and equipment to fight the same enemy? When the Iraqis see the shortcomings of their equipment next to the mighty American war machine, how could they trust U.S. intentions as sincerely aimed at helping them defend Iraq?  

Has the program failed because it was under funded or has the U.S. resisted funding it because we've been betrayed by the people our troops are fighting for? But the word failure implies the intentions were honest. Perhaps we should be asking how well has the administration succeeded in camouflaging its intent to fail. What would happen to Iraq if our tax dollars were adequate to support the military mission of training the Iraqis so we can leave their country?

It's no secret that Bush's goals and the neocon agenda of installing a pro-American secular government in Iraq failed. Instead, the country's free elections gave them a government dominated by a Shiite coalition much more aligned with Iran's interests than ours. Iran remains part of Bush's axis of evil, and an Iran-Iraq alliance may shut him out of the oil bonanza.

The lack of mutual trust seems obvious. It's placed the administration and Congress in the impossible situation of needing the new Iraqi military to succeed so we can leave, while being hog tied to the fear that whatever weapons and equipment are provided might end up in the wrong hands. They don't want to arm and strengthen those they blame for the sectarian violence, and certainly not a potential future enemy. They have to prolong the failure of getting the Iraqis prepared to defend their own country because they're afraid that seeking success might more readily guarantee a long term failure.  

The word surge isn't a mask for escalation, but for stalling. The administration doesn't want an independent Iraq unless it comes with the government it deems as acceptable. It's not coming soon, and while we wait, Bush wants to send more of our men and women to fight a battle they can't win. By not fully funding training and equipment for the Iraqis to defend themselves, it's difficult to imagine how President Bush has been supporting American troops who need their new Iraqi allies to succeed so we can stand down and bring them all home.

Two months after declaring the end to combat operations in Iraq, President George W. Bush issued a challenge to an Iraqi opposition he's never had to face: "Bring them on."

Three and a half years later, they're still coming. But according to the most celebrated study of the war, "Our government still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias." Who is then opposing the U.S. occupation?

The Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, doesn't attempt to provide solutions to the war in terms of the simple rhetoric we've become accustomed to hearing. The group's admission that there aren't any guarantees to success is a sobering introduction that displaces politically crafted speech with some degree of honesty.

Yet why does the final assessment of not understanding the enemy in Iraq lay buried near the end of the text? How accurate is the portrayal of the sources of violence as the Sunni Arab insurgency, al-Qaida and affiliated jihadist groups, Shiite militias, death squads and organized criminality? Is it true that most attacks against our troops come from the Sunni Arab insurgency?

History suggests that outside forces support such resistance movements. Not with uniformed fighters, but rather with funds, weapons and mercenaries. Iraq is no different.

The accusations that Iran and Syria are sending support across their borders aren't new. The Iraq Study Group recognizes that both nations are "content to see the United States tied down in Iraq." But they bring in a new player, the private citizens of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, who the study group claims are providing funds to the Sunni resistance.

Are the governments of those citizens aware of this? Is there any connection to the group's claim and the recent resignation of the Saudi ambassador to the United States? Where might the energy agreement signed last January between Saudi Arabia and China fit in?

Some pretty murky political questions begin to appear once all the various international relationships are considered. Is it possible that the most obvious adversaries to our presence in the Middle East aren't the only antagonistic forces behind the resistance movements?

China is the second-largest lender the United States relies on while our national debt soars, in a large part because of the war in Iraq. A longtime opponent of U.S. ideologies, China is emerging as a serious economic competitor. The building boom has been steady there for several years. Their thirst for oil is no less than ours.

Today's superpowers don't engage in direct warfare. America's aid to the anti-Communist freedom fighters in Afghanistan during the 1980s is merely one example. The Nicaraguan Contras are another, and that chapter of our history includes covert arms deals with Iran. And of course, the North Vietnamese received massive support from the USSR and China that helped keep the U.S. military tied down in Southeast Asia for years.

What is obvious here is that political leaders of nations share a common philosophy that is grossly insensitive to the citizens of other countries. The support of proxy armies and freedom fighters of less developed nations isn't about freedom and eventual peace for the people. Instead they aid and arm the resistance movements to undermine the economic and military strength of their global competitor. They add flames to the war with little regard for the suffering of the innocent.

The United States doesn't own the copyright to covert actions such as the Iran Contra Affair or their legal counterparts. We don't have the patent rights to shipping arms into areas of conflict that we deem essential for our national interest.

The objective here is not to accuse China of aiding the so-called insurgency, but that to understand it, we may do well to look past the Middle East geographically and ask who else prefers to see the United States fail in the country with the second largest known oil reserves in the world.

Enemies aren't created by searching for peace, but rather by the competing interests of nations. Baker and Hamilton again tell us that our war hasn't made friends: "Sixty-one percent of Iraqis approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces." Might that not encourage ideological and economic competitors around the world to lend the resistance movements support to try to undermine U.S. goals in Iraq?

It's time to be honest about the Iraq war. It will last for years unless we choose to do what's right and end it.

You can read Rich Moniak's speech at the MFSO rally observing the 3rd anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq in Juneau (3/19/2006)

The only remaining aspect of interest for me will be the self-serving baloney from the little man Bush who'll pretend he single-handedly roped Hussein while sitting in the saddle of his presidential hobby horse."

This worst president's legacy to America will not be the trackdown and arrest of a second-rate dictator. No ... it will be this -

... even if among these newly-revealed 500 whatevers that were in existence prior to the first Gulf War there isn't anything that could have come close to that dreaded "mushroom cloud" - the anxiety image that prompted dumbed down Americans to not oppose the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Arkin continues:

But the current dust-up over an intelligence memo indicating that U.S. forces have recovered about 500 old chemical munitions does prove one thing: When it comes to weapons of mass destruction, we are unable to differentiate and unable to have a rational debate.  The term WMD has also become so expansive as to become meaningless.

...The problem is that Santorum, Rumsfeld, President Bush, Cheney, and most Washington wonks love to say "weapons of mass destruction" They don't differentiate between, say, Russian intercontinental missiles with multiple nuclear warheads and 20-year-old Iraqi chemical shells.

The threshold for labeling something WMD in this world is low, if it exists at all. Many of the "chemical munitions" found in Iraq were even "unfilled" shells. That is, they had never been filled with chemical agent, according to the summary.  But, as Rumsfeld says, "they are weapons of mass destruction."

Such antics of course are part of the national and state Republican pretended wisdom of why we are occupying Iraq,

why our sons and daughters are fighting the Bush-labeled "noble cause" around which Bush and Republicans cannot or are too afraid to wrap a clearly stated definition ...

why no Republican is willing nor has the courage to say what the course we must stay on looks like so as to help American citizens understand why we must ...

Strictly limited RNC-dictated talking points in both the House and Senate last week where Reichert, Hastings and McMorris all joined in the blind-obedience chorus - and where CEO McGavick wants to sing in the same choir - included the coward's way of avoiding responsibility.

Karl Rove attempted to put on a soldier's uniform when he made his cowardly declaration about courageous soldiers who fight as opposed to cowardly non-soldiers who "cut and run" (see footnote at end of article).

This from someone who avoided service; who himself cut and ran during Viet Nam. These antics from prominent Republicans hang around the party's candidates necks like gaudy ties and we fail if we don't ask them if they agree with and support these chicken hawk declarations from the likes of Rove and Cheney.

All Republicans should be challenged to clarify publicly whether or not they agree with and support the self-serving cowardice of Rove, Cheney and Bush who have no credibility as warriors and embarrass every American solider and veteran when they put on the tough-talk uniform.

In our own state, the Republican Party has no firm Iraq strategy nor agenda that reflects the common good of our country and its citizens.

Particularly damaging for Republicans is the party's total lack of sensitivity regarding the actual soldiers and their families who reside here.

Led now by CEO McGavick and the Congressional Republican marionettes, Washington Republicans  have repeatedly - with a blind insistence and insensitivity - offered soldiers and their families the empty slogan, "Stay the Course"

... a phrase totally devoid of substance, meaning and relevance in a meaningful way

... a phrase the use of which fails to address positively the day-to-day struggle of coping with life that includes loved ones in harms way.

Why have Republicans done this and failed us?

Because the directive comes from the Republican National Committee and its dominant strategists who also hold the  Presidential hands attempting to hang on to the government steering wheel.

What the lock-step robot-like and narrowly restricted speeches in the recent House and Senate "debates" on the occupation of Iraq reflect is an assumption that American voters are limited in their attention spans ...

that cheap and shabby sound-bite phrases like "cut and run" are all we need to hear .... worse, all we need to know.

So in Washington we find ourselves having to deal with a party and candidates that dissemintate half-truths, falsehoods and disingenuous cherry-picked facts to Washingtonians.

Why?

Because we are presumed to be stupid, ignorant, naive and gullible.

Don't believe me?

What state party distorted information about sex offenders and then sent pictoral flyers to a limited number of specifically selected legislative districts rather than statewide - which one would think a party concerned about the whole state would do as part of civic responsibility?

Which party went out of its way to disenfranchise voters and belittle voting rights in the interest of limiting the size of the vote as a tactic for election victory?

What party created the moniker "Death Tax" as a framing phrase for the Estate Tax and then pretended that the Estate Tax harms and victimizes a majority of citizens when only the richest are impacted?

What party demeans and ridicules the idea of working toward peace - including an advocacy for a Department of Peace?

What party refers to peace as an alternative having no credibility in the real world where wars are started by lies and liars and sustained by willful refusal to accept responsibility and make no effort to define missions, courses, jobs and exit strategies?

Go to the state Republican website and read the public announcements that reek with the arrogance of assumed electoral stupidity.

The issue here is that even as I write this, the  overwhelming majority opinion in this country is that America is off-track;

America is tragically moving in wrong directions.

Polls continually reflect this concern and a national pessimism even more powerful than the considerable unpopularity of the occupation of Iraq.

Most Americans believe we are off track and tragically moving in the wrong direction to our own national and local detriment

... and the Republicans want us to stay that course?

-----------------------------

*Based on Republican usage and definition, the following are logical conclusions of what it means to cut and run:

Failure to support the troops and the willful act of cutting funds to the VA is a case of cut and run.

Hiding caskets returning home from the occupation of Iraq and sneaking them into the country in the middle of the night is a case of cut and run.

Refusal to meet with a grieving mother last summer was case of cut and run.

Refusal to find and fire leakers is a case of cut and run.

Refusal to take responsibility for failure in the wake of Katrina is a case of cut and run.

Refusal to effect a thorough rebuilding of Louisiana and Mississippi is a case of cut and run.

The Medicare D program with it's betrayal of citizens to cater to corporations is a case of cut and run.

Millions of children who have been left behind is a case of cut and run.

Cowering before Right Wing Christian blowhards and making public declarations in support of legislation against gay marriage and gay rights is a case of cut and run.

Cowering before Right Wing Christian blowhards in appointing judges too far of the course they ought to stay on is a case of cut and run.

Shall I continue?

Better yet, how many more examples can we find? Comments are welcome.