Bush's big mess in the Middle East

Rodrigue Tremblay, Online Journal Guest Writer

....Desperate and already labeled the "worst American president ever," George W. Bush chose to push aside the wise advice of the Baker-Hamilton Commission and drank once more the neocons' potion of a military 'surge' in Iraq. After the lynching of prisoner of war Saddam Hussein, an illegal act under the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, Bush II fired the top generals who opposed his "fuite en avant" strategy -- General John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, and General George Casey, the chief general in Iraq -- and replaced them with Adm. William Fallon and Lt. Gen. David Petraeus. Last November, Gen. John Abizaid rejected maverick senator John McCain's and pro-Israel senator Joe Lieberman's calls for increased U.S. troop levels in Iraq. General Abizaid said that he had "met with every divisional commander and had asked them if bringing in more American troops now [would] add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq and they all said 'no.'" But Bush, as amateur commander-in-chief, knows better than the generals in the field and he 'decided' to side with apprentice generals John McCain and Joe Lieberman...

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