reality-based educator

Preznut Bush says his surge policy in Iraq is working wonderfully.

Of course he does.

He's crazy.

And desperate.

He doesn't want to be forced to withdraw troops from Iraq while he is preznut.

He wants the next man or woman to have to do that for him.

He's Barbara's little boy - always needing someone else to clean up his mess for him.

You would think by the time he reached 60, he would have grown up.

But he hasn't.

So he can say things like this:

EAST GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. — President Bush said Friday that his revised military strategy was taking hold in Iraq and "the direction of the fight is beginning to shift," even as he acknowledged "horrific" bombings that killed more than 200 people in Baghdad this week.

"So far, the operation is meeting expectations," Bush said of the boost in U.S. troops he ordered and the new focus on improving security in Baghdad neighborhoods.

The president said the number of sectarian attacks in the capital had declined by half since the stepped-up efforts began.

...

Bush said U.S. and Iraqi forces had received more tips about terrorist and insurgent hideouts in the last three months than in any previous three-month period. He also said seizures of weapons had increased.

"Day by day, block by block, Iraqi and American forces are making incremental gains in Baghdad," he said.

"Direction of the fight has shifted...making incremental gains...day by day, block by block..."

Finish his next sentence for him.

I think it's "...we have to give this Petraeus plan a chance to work..."

Which is another way of saying: "Let the next guy or gal clean up my mess for me."

A desperate man is a scary man - he's willing to say or do anything to save his own skin.

And Preznut Bush is one desperate man.

POSTSCRIPT: And just to prove how hollow the preznut's words about Iraq are, here are two examples of Bush's soaring, Michael Gerson-penned rhetoric about Iraq that proved unable to stand the test of the reality on the ground:

After declaring "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down..." at least 125 times over the past few years, the United States NO LONGER believes the Iraqi security forces will be able to stand up for themselves and defeat the insurgency:

WASHINGTON - Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

So much for U.S. foreces standing down anytime soon.

The preznut has also said:

The success of democracy in Iraq would be a crushing blow to the forces of terror, and the terrorists know it. The defeat of terror in Iraq will set that nation on a course to lasting freedom, and will give hope to millions, and the Iraqi people know it. And a free, democratic Iraq will inspire reformers throughout the Middle East and make America more secure.

What the preznut fails to mention is how this new free and democratic Iraq will contain very high walls separating the free and democratic Iraqis from each other:

US troops are building a wall around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad, part of a strategy to “break the cycle of sectarian violence” in the Iraqi capital.

Work began on April 10 on the 5-km cement wall at Adhamiya, a mainly Sunni Arab area surrounded on three sides by Shi’ite communities.

“The wall is one of the centrepieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence,” Sergeant Mike Pryor, a public affairs officer, wrote in an article released by the US military.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that a similar project had started around Doura, another Sunni area in southern Baghdad.

You know, when I think about a "free and democratic society," I think 12 foot walls dividing the citizenry from each other.

No wonder the preznut is so desperate.

Every piece of propaganda he has uttered over the past 4 years regarding Iraq has come back to bite him on his desperate, arrogant ass.

UPDATE: According to the Associated Press, the Pentagon is laying the groundwork to extend the U.S. troop build-up in Iraq at the very same time that the escalation is proving deadly to the U.S. military:

More than half of the extra 21,500 combat troops designated for Baghdad duty have arrived; the rest are due by June. Already it is evident that putting them in the most hotly contested parts of the capital is taking a toll. An average of 22 U.S. troops have died per week in April, the highest rate so far this year.

"This is certainly a price that we're paying for this increased security," Adm. William Fallon, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, told a House committee Wednesday.

...

So far the results are mixed, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this week during a visit to Iraq that he wants to see faster political progress by the Iraqis. "The clock is ticking," he said, referring to the limited time the administration can pursue its strategy before the American public demands an end to the war.

Sure the clock is ticking...in January 2009, the pull-out starts.

Until then, the casualties will continue and if Bush insists upon placing American forces in posts around Baghdad, the casualties will continue at an accelerated rate.

SECOND UPDATE: Some Sunnis REALLY don't like the wall the U.S. is building around them:

Some Adhamiya residents have said the wall will make their district a prison.

"The Americans will provoke more trouble with this," one resident, Arkan Saeed, told the BBC. "They're telling us the wall is to protect us from the Shia militia and they're telling the Shia they're protecting them from us.

"But it's the Americans who started all the sectarian violence in the first place."

...

"Erecting concrete walls between neighbourhoods is not a solution to the collapse in security and the rampant violence," housewife Um Haider told AFP news agency.

"If so, Baghdadis would find themselves in a maze of high walls overnight."

Another resident, Mustafa, said: "I resent the barrier. It will make Adhamiya a big prison."

Other residents also expressed alarm and said they had not been consulted before construction began.

"This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Adhamiya," Ahmed al-Dulaimi told the Associated Press news agency.

"We are in our fourth year of occupation and we are seeing the number of blast walls increasing day after day."

I'm sure the preznut does not understand the ingratitude of the complaining Sunnis. After all, aren't we building the 12 foot walls with good old American taxpayer money?

Sheesh...you just can't make some people happy.