Devastating denial

The writing has been on the walls of Iraq for an exceedingly long time. And who is reading the writing? Just about everybody in the world outside the USA. And lately, finally, more and more ordinary folks in this our sad, bamboozled nation.

But not the Decider Himself. Nor the True Believers In The Decider. No, for them "victory" (whatever that is supposed to mean) is the only possibility. 3,699 dead US troops are just not enough. So do some more denial and send more exhausted troops back into the deadly theater of absurd chaos. And while their exhaustion is evolving into total burnout, go recruiting into the schools and literally bribe young people to sign up fast.

The writing on the wall--large letters written in blood--says CIVIL WAR. Shiites keep murdering Sunnis. Sunnis keep murdering Shiites. The sectarian madness goes even beyond that ancient rivalry. Today some Islamist group oerating near the northern city of Mosul went after members of the Kurdish Yazidi religious sect. At least four explosions went off; they killed at least 200 people and wounded another 200.

Beneath the choking smoke of this civil war, 2 million Iraqis are displaced in their own country. (Another 2 million have fled to crowded confusion in Syria and Jordan and beyond.) The UN reports that only one out of every three Iraqis has access to clean drinking water. 80% of the population lacks sanitation.

The White House's latest crutch for maintaining their morbid denial has been the call to wait for Gen. David Petraeus to report next month. But Petraeus himself already has said that "conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to justify a drawdown of US military forces." If you work for George W. Bush, it is always "full steam ahead."

It is far beyond time for the minions of the Decider to see through the eyes of the rest of the conscious world. Iraq is three countries, not one. This is a civil war. The warring parties are not going to work it out by themselves. The neighboring Arab nations and the UN have to step in strongly. And the US has to get out...before we create countless more jihadists.