About this, I hate being right

I can't begin to remember how many times over the past four years I've said or written that the United States will never leave Iraq until and unless either one of two events happen: Either a battlefield defeat of American forces in detail, meaning high U.S. casualties followed by a mass surrender, and considering the weapons and training of the Iraqi "insurgents," whoever they may be at any given time, a high unlikely scenario; or a general mutiny of all, or at the very least a sizable majority, army and marine units now in Iraq.

So this morning BuzzFlash.com starts the day off with this headline:

Surprise! The "Surge" Was Just an Excuse to Increase Long-Term Troop Levels in Iraq! Dang, You Could Have Fooled Us! "Conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to justify a drawdown of U.S. military forces, the top commander in Iraq said yesterday." Commitment to Last For Years, Petraeus Claims.

Which links us to a news story out of the Washington Post.com that says:

Conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to justify a drawdown of U.S. military forces, the top commander in Iraq said yesterday.

Asked whether he thought the job assigned to an additional 30,000 troops deployed as the centerpiece of President Bush's new war strategy would be completed by then, Gen. David H. Petraeus replied: "I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do."

Asserting steady, albeit slow, military and political progress, Petraeus said that the "many, many challenges" would not be resolved "in a year or even two years." Similar counterinsurgency operations, he said, citing Britain's experience in Northern Ireland, "have gone at least nine or 10 years." He said he and Crocker would make "some recommendations on the way ahead" to Congress, and that it was realistic to assume "some form of long-term security arrangement" with Iraq.

Why am I not surprized. What with 14 permanant bases being constructed at this very minute in Iraq. With the Democratic failure to even send a stripped-down war funding bill to the White House with a timeline for withdrawal last month. With Cindy Sheehan resigning as the public face of domestic resistance to the Iraq occupation. Nope, the country's stuck in Iraq for at least the next ten years. And that's about the only truth in General Petraeus' remarkds.

There is another reason that the United States will not get out of Iraq anytime soon.

Take for example the poor slub seen here, 34-year-old Army Pfc Michale Pittman of Davenport Iowa.

The Des Moines Register story implies, Pittman enlisted rather late in life out of economic necessity, "Pittman attended Rock Island High School and worked as a painter before joining the Army." Apparently the poor deluded bastard was also one of these *quote-unquote* Christians who is out to prepare the world for christ's second coming, convert heathens and kill infidels.

Mr. Pittman's mother, co-pastor of some bible-thumping church or other in Moline, Il, is quoted in Sunday's Quad Cities Times.com

“I thought it was going to happen to anybody’s son, not Michael,” Sandra Hughes said Saturday night when asked whether she worried about this day coming. “I put him in God’s hands and I prayed. I don’t understand it. But you don’t question God. God works out everything for good for those who love him, and I know Michael is in heaven.”

Awww,how charitable of Mrs. Hughes, thinking, hoping that god might not visit a grusome, pointless death upon her Michael. But now he's a christian martyr up in Jesus's heaven waging war on those terrible Muslim martyrs from Muhammand's heaven. Just fuck all of them.