Oliver North Nixes Bush’s Iraq “Surge” Plan

More bad news for President George W. Bush. If this keeps up, the only people strongly endorsing his impending plan for a “surge” (escalation) of troops in Iraq will be Rush, Sean, John Mc and Joe L:

For months, advisers to President George W. Bush have been trying to convince the commander in chief that more U.S. troops in Iraq will improve prospects for victory. Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), both recently returned from Iraq (and a courageous surprise stopover in Ramadi, capital of bloody Al Anbar Province) also support adding more American troops. Unfortunately, they are wrong.

And details why he thinks they’re wrong in a column on Human Events’ website with the title: More Troops = More Targets.

But this paragraph is downright damning in what he implies about Lieberman and McCain:

McCain and Lieberman talked to many of the same officers and senior NCOs I covered for FOX News during my most recent trip to Iraq. Not one of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen or Marines I interviewed told me that they wanted more U.S. boots on the ground. In fact, nearly all expressed just the opposite: “We don’t need more American troops, we need more Iraqi troops,” was a common refrain. They are right.The call for incrementally increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq — a “solution” that was first proffered last summer as the congressional election campaign heated up — sounds eerily like Lyndon Johnson’s plan to save Vietnam in the mid 1960s. Johnson saw “gradual escalation” as a way not to lose, and to avoid the unpleasant necessity of directly confronting North Vietnam. Regrettably, that also meant we could not win.

Adding 10,000 or 20,000 more U.S. combat troops — mostly soldiers and Marines — isn’t going to improve Iraqi willingness to fight their own fight — an imperative if we are to claim victory in this war. While putting 200,000 American or NATO troops on the Iranian and Syrian borders to stop infiltration might make sense, that’s “mission impossible” given the size of U.S. and allied armed forces.

The bottom line again seems to be that the bottom is quickly falling out of the bottom of the pail in George Bush’s support from within his own party. Bush’s remaining support seems to come mostly from neocon strategists, those who believe that because he is the President he must be followed without question, or those who are still giving an administration that has at many turns been given the benefit of the doubt and either been proven wrong or…inaccurate…in its assertions the continued benefit of the doubt. But the free pass has now expired with much of the American public and among elected officials of both parties.

It’ll be hard for administration defenders to paint North as a RINO, a total ignoramus on military matters, someone who has never been to Iraq to talk to anyone himself, or as a Democrat who simply hates Bush.

And it’ll be interesting how spin will be employed to comment on the final paragraph in his piece:

A “surge” or “targeted increase in U.S. troop strength” or whatever the politicians want to call dispatching more combat troops to Iraq isn’t the answer. Adding more trainers and helping the Iraqis to help themselves, is. Sending more U.S. combat troops is simply sending more targets.