9-04-07, 9:58 am

In April 2005, just weeks before Vice President Dick Cheney infamously announced to Larry King that the insurgency in Iraq was in its 'last throes,' 52 Americans were killed. Last month, the 8th month of the troop 'surge,' 85 Americans were killed, and more than 1,800 Iraqis were killed in ongoing sectarian violence.

As Congress returns to Washington, President Bush plans to promote the idea of progress in Iraq in order to maintain the four-year long occupation and even to take another crack at squeezing another $50 billion dollars out of US taxpayers to sink into his war.

General Petraeus gave a foretaste of his role in the White House's publicity campaign by announcing to the Australian press that the 'surge' is working. Attempting to boost the waning fortunes of right-wing Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who has come under severe criticism for keep his country's contingent of 500 troops in Iraq, Petraeus reportedly made the very strange statement that 'We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress and we believe al-Qaida is off balance at the very least.'

Of course, saying 'we say we have done something' isn't the same as saying 'we have done something.'

But Petraeus's comments came on the heels of media accounts of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that showed little political progress in Iraq, political progress that must be made before Petraeus or the White House can declare sectarian violence to be in its 'last throes.'

According to media accounts, the GAO report indicates that the vast majority of the 'benchmarks' of political progress, which congressional Republicans and the White House insisted last spring should substitute for Democratic demands for a timetable for withdrawal, have not been met.

And since both security and political problems originate with ongoing US interference, the occupation itself and the imperial relationship preclude real progress on either.

In his extensive record of the Bush administration's handling of the war, State of Denial, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote: 'Nearly three years after the invasion [Feb. 2006] and two years after the transfer of sovereignty, the administration was addressing the same issues.'

Woodward referred to lack of security, infrastructure failures, economic catastrophe, and widespread corruption. It is now 4 and a half years since the war began, and to that still baleful list should be added the growing humanitarian crisis: about 8 million without basic potable water services, massive electrical blackouts, as many as a total of 1 million dead, 4 million displaced, burgeoning refugee camps, and spreading public health catastrophes. The sad reality of life in Iraq is the true measure of progress.

In a continuing display of his 'denial' of this reality, in a speech in Iraq on Monday, Bush praised progress in Iraq. He maintained, however, that the military occupation would continue until withdrawal could be begun 'from a position of strength and success.'

And again Bush failed to give realistic milestones for what 'strength and success' means.

--Reach Joel Wendland at

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