Keep Gitmo Open

Time has a real good article by a reporter who spent a week with the Marines of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, Second Marine Division, in Ramadi, Iraq. These are "my" Marines, cuz I was in 3/8 for a coupla years in the '60s.

A real good look at a day in the life of a rifle squad, but the last few paragraphs really tell the story of the bigger picture.

So why does Ramadi remain beyond the U.S.'s control? Part of the problem, many officers say, is that the troops' authority to act is constrained by politics. Soldiers cannot lock up suspected insurgents without first getting an arrest warrant and a sworn statement from two witnesses. And those who are convicted often receive jail sentences that are shorter than a grunt's tour of Iraq. "We keep seeing guys we arrested coming back out, and things get worse again," says an intelligence officer.

The bigger problem, though, is one that few in the military command want to hear: there aren't enough troops to do the job. "There's a realization, as every military commander knows, that you cannot be strong everywhere," says Gronski of Ramadi. "In the outlying areas, we think in terms of an economy of force where we are willing to accept risk by not placing as many troops." But while Gronski says his fighting strength is "appropriate," other commanders bristle at the limitations. "I can't believe it each time the Secretary of Defense talks about reducing force," says a senior U.S. officer. War planners in Iraq say just getting a handle on Ramadi demands three times as many soldiers as are there now. Several U.S. commanders say they won't ask superiors for more troops or plan large-scale operations because doing so would expose problems in the U.S.'s strategy that no one wants to acknowledge. "It's what I call the Big Lie," a high-ranking U.S. commander told TIME.

There it is: the Big Lie.

Bush starts an illegal unnecessary war by lying, Rumsfeld then goes against the advice of his military advisers and turns a bad plan into a worse plan by not sending enough troops to commit the original crime. The American public has started to see through all the smoke and wants Bush's War over with because it's a)wrong to begin with and, b)failing, so Bush is trying to spread the message that everything's going just peachy and maybe, just maybe, the troop level can be drawn down by -oh, I don't know- election day. He dare not admit the whole deal was a clusterfuck from the get-go, so he can't send enough troops to do the job like he should have in the first place. Illegal war, bad planning, failure, shine it on, admit no mistakes, lie some more.

Meanwhile, young Americans are being hung out to dry, and die, for Bush's, Cheney's, Rumsfeld's and others' image of themselves, not to mention their crimes and incompetence.

Keep Gitmo open - for them.