Bill Maher has a segment on his HBO show, Real Time,  called "New Rules."  It usually comes right after the pie throwing contest.

This week we discovered a new rule of the Bush administration's military "strategery."   I call it the "Civil War Club" rule.



Deny, deny, deny.   Deny even the possibility that there could be a civil war.  Call it something else, anything else but a civil war.  Lord knows that the Word Parser in Chief has a lot of practice in prevarication.  He and his enablers should get a lot of mileage out of the Rovellian "sectarian violence."

RUMSFELD: 

"The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the _ from a security standpoint _ have the Iraqi security forces deal with it, to the extent they are able to,"

One way to prevent your battle plan from becoming the first casualty of contact with the enemy is to deny there is a plan, or an enemy, or contact.   But even that plan calls for a contingency plan -- something the boys in the five-pointed building on the Potomac are just now drawing up.

(Note to Pentagon staffers.   Churchill was referring to Dunkirk when he said this was England's "finest hour."   There's no shame in getting out of harm's way to live and fight another day.)

CHENEY: 

"What we've seen is a serious effort by them to foment a civil war," Cheney said in an interview on "Face the Nation" on CBS on the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. "But I don't think they've been successful."

BUSH:

Listen, we all recognize that there is violence, that there's sectarian violence. But the way I look at the situation is that the Iraqis took a look and decided not to go to civil war.

All this despite the opinion of the guy we originally hand picked to be Iraq's Prime Minister saying in no uncertain terms that what we have is indeed a civil war.  I guess he's no longer on the payroll since Iran's got more influence than we do in the Iraqi Parliament.

ALLAWI:

It is unfortunate that we are in civil war… If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is.

CIVIL WAR?  We Don't Got No Civil War!

Like Ceasar and the Ides of March, the administration was warned that their misadventure could turn south in a big way, yet typically ignored scenerios that ran counter to their myopic rosey gloss.

"And now civil discord broke out again worse than ever and increased enormously.  Massacres, banishments, and proscriptions of both senators and knights took place straightway, including great numbers of both classes, the chiefs of factions surrendering their enemies to each other, and for this purpose not sparing even their friends and brothers; so much did animosity toward rivals overpower the love of kindred.  So in the course of events the Roman empire was partitioned, as though it had been their private property, by these three men:  Antony, Lepidus, and the one who was first called Octavius, but afterwards Caesar from his relationship to the other Caesar and adoption in his will."

Quotation from Appian, courtesy Stirling Newberry

We, the children of the twentieth century, grown to accept the struggles of east versus west being played out in civil wars between north and south have trouble recognizing a nacent civil war that has yet to develop along natural geographical boundaries. 

After the reunification of the Northern and Southern United States in the 1860's, and the consolidation of the major spheres of influence along an east/west divide resulting from the World Wars, our enemies were North Korea, North Vietnam.   Even the breakup of Yugoslavia provided clear provinces that we could choose to defend or attack.   Amazing that so soon after Somalia we are forgetting that we have no stomach for a Lebanese style civil war where allegiances varied from neighborhood to neighborhood. 

Even worse than Vietnam where we had difficulty distinguishing friend from foe while everybody knew who we were -- Iraq's situation provides absolutely no landmarks, no base across a distant border nor supply lines to identify the location or choke points for the insurgents.  Not yet, anyway.  

The solution is not to deny the obvious in some Orwellian fantasy of language manipulation, but to prevent the imminent catastrophe through the use of overwhelming force, or to allow the inevitable -- promising to mop up the blood-soaked earth when the Iraqis themselves tire of playing at war.  Bush has left himself with no good choices because he has made such bad choices.  His decision to do nothing, to refuse to put in place a force large enough to enforce peace, to stay the course and leave the timing of withdrawal to the next White House resident, is the most cowardly example to date of misleadership.

Bush's constant meme of leaving the decisions on troop strength to commanders on the ground not only ignores the advice of "Viceroy" Bremmer and General Shinseki who both pleaded for massive amounts of personnel, it also refuses to acknowledge the sense of the men on the ground today. 

I refer of course to The Zogby poll.  Zogby, the darling of the conservatives when he nailed the 2000 election.  Now somewhat out of favor, but still worthy of a "shout out".  Mystery Pollster had some fine analysis and interviewed him over this poll here, here and here.

His latest post on the subject, which addressed criticism of the question of when the troops thought we should leave, was blown out of the water with Bush punting the question to the 44th President.

Que the tape of Bush's news conference in which the President said that it would be for future presidents and future Iraqi governments to decide when we leave.

He has no intention of leaving.  Did he ever?  Did Rumsfeld really mean it when he said, "You don't know if it is going to last two days, two weeks, or two months ... but certainly it isn't going to last two years," before the war started?  Not that anyone's been keeping score.  I guess calendars, like facts on the ground, are kinda foggy.

That also means that Bush really doesn't care that the folks with eyes on the ground think that we should either get out:

1. immediately (29%)
2. within the next six months (22%)
3. within six to twelve months (21%) OR
4. They should stay as long as they are needed (23%)
5. Not sure (5%)

The press conference clearly told me that Bush not only doesn't have an exit strategy, any more than Rumsfeld has a plan to deal with a full blown civil war.  When pressed by Congress a week ago Rummy said his plan to deal with a possible civil war was not to let a civil war happen (1st rule of "Civil War Club" is to never talk about "Civil War Club").

Zogby's difficulty in obtaining a scientifically valid sample in a war zone aside, 85% of our soldiers believing the absolute lie that we are in Iraq as a direct retaliation for 9/11 is fricking HUGE.  Let's give it the highest possible margin of error-- a 15% MOE puts the high end at 100% and the low at 70% of our troops convinced that somehow Hussein sent those planes into the WTC.

Still, if "only" 50% of our soldiers were conviced that we were in Iraq to retaliate for 9/11 -- something Bush, et al. have taken pains never to actually be quoted on yet go our of their way to imply -- that confirms either an asoundingly effective use of propaganda by the administration or a sad comentary on our soldiers knowledge of why people are shooting at them.

Here at home that kind of ignorance is only displayed by some 22% or so stubborn members of the Bush cult.  That's down from the unbelievable 70% who bought the snake oil at the beginning of the war, and the 80% who suspected that Baghdad was behind 9/11 right after the towers fell.

Until I saw Zogby's poll of the troops, I wouldn't necessarily have considered it gospel that a trooper on the ground said we should stay, or go, or what benchmarks we needed to set -- but would have given it serious respect nonetheless.  Now my confidence in their opinion has been seriously shaken. 

If this is the effect of having Rush Limbaugh piped into their heads through Armed Service Radio it's insulting to their intelligence, an injustice to their service and complete disrepect for their honor.

If that's what they've been fed from their superiors, it's a disgrace.

Make special note of the fact that despite their disconnect with reality, the vast majority think that sometime in the very near future we must find some way to get out of Iraq without calling it "cut and run."  Indeed, I would call that a great hour.

I think that Bush's refusal even to consider that we could get out of Iraq before he is out of office is the best reason yet to impeach him.  It might not be a legal reason, or even politically feasible, but it sure would save a lot of lives.