DR. J'S SHORT SHOT
by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Bush is fiddling while Iraq burns. He is stood up at dinner by his own designated Iraqi Prime Minister. But he keeps on saying "we will stay until the job is done, we will give the PM all the help he needs, until victory is achieved," even though we are no longer "staying the course," without ever defining victory. He is just delighted to have the battle of words rage over what we should call what is going on in Iraq rather than over the total failure of his policy regardless of what it is called.

For some time I have wondered if the various sides in the Iraq civil war would ever come to their senses and realize that their prime enemy is not each other but the U.S., which is an occupying force with its own agenda: oil and bases, and for the Cheney wing, permanent war at the permanent expense of Iraq. Yesterday morning on CNN in a news item that I have not yet seen elsewhere, it was stated that several prominent Sunni and Christian leaders have reached out to Muqtada al-Sadr, the most prominent anti-US Shiite leader. He had temporarily suspended the participation of several of his top aides in the current government, to protest Prime Minister al-Maliki's meeting with Bush in Jordan.

The aforementioned leaders have said that they are looking for common ground with al-Sadr and are in the process of asking the UN to review its mandate under which the U.S. claims to be acting. Yes, folks, the key to achieving peace in Iraq may very well not be the continued U.S. presence there but its departure at the earliest possible time. If such a demand comes from a united Iraqi front, I just wonder what Busheney will do then. We already know what both the Baker wing of the Republican Party and the Congressional Democrats will be doing: dancing down the Congressional isles together.

DR. J'S SHORT SHOT

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) a weekly Contributing Author for The Political Junkies (www.thepoliticaljunkies.net [1]) and a Columnist for BuzzFlash.

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