Bush's new direction .....

Well, the President made his pitch and aside from confessing to having made some mistakes in Iraq is confident that 21,000 more American troops in the front lines will make a difference.

After watching CSPAN and CNN for three hours after listening to the President with interviews of congress people, military generals, soldiers who have served in Iraq, reporters in Iraq, and even political guru's, I'm not at all excited about our further involvement in Iraq nor am I expectant of any improvement in the outcome of the war.

I'm sure most of you also watched the event and its repercussions so I'm only going to mention a couple of my impressions.

According to most it seems that 50,000 troops two years ago might have made a difference, but now it would take 200,000 troops in Baghdad alone.

The President claimed that his proposal was one from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, but reporters on the ground pointed out that Maliki was put in power by the al-Sadr Shiite militia which is anti-American and one of the factions fighting for control of Iraq. Thus the prime question is whether he would give more than lip service to Bush's plan. Historically, Makiki has not kept any of his promises.

Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky maintained that the war in Iraq has kept al Caida from attacking the U.S. for the past four or five years. That has to be pure nonsense! It took a total of nineteen men with very few resources to bring about the 9-11 tragedy. Al Caida could certainly do something similar anytime it wants to.

Al Caida was not involved in Iraq at all before we invaded Iraq because Saddam was not at all friendly or sympathetic with bin Laden! Al Caida is now in Iraq opportunistically in its hatred for America and only because we are there.

The war in Iraq is a full fledged power struggle primarily between the Sunni's and the Shiite's where the majority Shiite's "want the Sunni's to admit defeat" after decades of Sunni domination. That, to me is nothing more than civil war – a war between religious factions.

The President's men say that to leave Iraq would lead to disaster - but would it? Nothing in this life is black and white and most certainly if we de-escalated our active involvement with Iraq but still provided advisors, logistical support, maintained a military presence in the region where we have other national interests, and made a greater effort to negotiate with Iraq's neighbors - especially Syria and Iran, the only result would be that we left the Iraqi people to their own self-determination. And that is what we should have done in the first place!

Actually, it was stated during the Vietnam war that to leave would doom the world to Communism - but it didn't happen! That war cost us 58,000 American lives.

Bottom line: The Bush escalation of the Iraq war will continue the conflict well into the next presidency. If that happens, the Republicans might as well not even run a candidate! And that would not be good for either party.