While Bush Warned To Expect More U.S. Casualties In Iraq, He Failed to Mention He's Removing (The Precious Few) Current Troop Safeguards

Keith Olbermann on Countdown on MSNBC just now reminds me of something I wanted to write about earlier based on some material I read yesterday and today. Specifically, this has to do with the warnings Bush put forth Wednesday night to expect more troop casualties.

What Bush (undoubtedly deliberately) failed to indicate at that time, however, is that the reasons for the possible increase in casualties is not just the larger numbers of targets (troops) he's putting in there. No, it's because Bush has decided to remove some of the precious few protections at least some of our troops stationed there currently enjoy (not in the Saturday night dinner in a movie sense, of course).

A big part of this increased danger comes from Bush's plan to divide Baghdad into nine (9) different districts - effectively gated communities, which comes straight from the Vietnam War playbook in a measure that was not only a massive failure but cost LOTS of lives, both among U.S. troops and innocent civilians. In fact, if you go back and read military experts who discuss how this "divisioning" (failed to) work in Vietnam, you almost invariably read that it was such a terrible plan that it should never be repeated. Bush, of course, is ignoring that in the proof that Santayana was right, that those who do not understand history are condemned - not to mention, condemn everyone else - to repeat it.

American soldiers will then be divvied up between those nine districts. As part of this, these servicemen and women will NOT return to their protected, fortified bases at night (and we haven't yet had an episode of a major barracks attack there wiping out our troops) but stay instead at Iraqi police barracks in each district. Now Iraqi police barracks have been major targets. The only entities that have been destroyed faster in Iraq than our supposed "dreams of a democratic Iraq" are Iraqi policemen and their facilities.

So yeah, expect some serious bloodshed. Although Iraqi cops have died in massive numbers, this plan is guaranteed to kill them at a greatly accelerated rate, and take our soldiers with them. And expect lots of collateral damage too as civilians get caught more and more (and they're dying fast already) in the Bush-ordered escalation because these police barracks are often located in civilian residential neighborhoods and civilians must interact with the cops.

Tragically, there's more. Heretofore, it's been verboten to have American soldiers riding around with Iraqi Army soldiers for many reasons. Bush has zapped this, too. Wait! It gets worse.

After Iraqi cops, Iraqi Army soldiers are the second biggest local native target. Coupling U.S. soldiers with them just increases the target and the likely deaths, likely exponentially. Ah, but Bush still isn't done yet!

Not only with American troops be embedded within the Iraqi Army groups, but they will act as secondaries while the Iraqi Army soldiers lead them as well as give the orders (and mind you, for all the brave and honorable Iraqis who have tried to defend their country, there have also been numerous, non-stop reports of both Iraqi soldiers and cops who are part of these death squads, torture teams, etc. wreaking havoc on the civilian populace, on contractors, on American troops).

Worse - if possible - is the fact that NO Iraqi military vehicles are armored. So our Armyites and Marines will go from moving about in at least SOME protected vehicles to being transported in vehicles that have as their only protection (::cough::) a gigantic bullseye painted on them.

Says Bush's handpicked military yes-men of this change, "the rewards outweigh the dangers."

Oh, really?