Lost in the desert

Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara knew in 1968 that the Vietnam war was lost. We continued to send Americans there to die for 4 more years and thousands did. Some were my friends and relatives. In 2004 things continue to go down hill in Iraq. The president admitted today that Iraqization is going as well as Vietnimization went 35 years ago, not at all. By all accounts the Iraqi security forces were useless in the recent assault on Falluja. In the Washington Post today Thomas E. Ricks tells us that the Precision of Base Attack Worries Military Experts. It should because it was an inside job. One of the problems in Vietnam was the Americans never knew who the enemy was. It should not have been that hard because the reality is most of the Vietnamese were the enemy. The young boy who smiled at you during the day would try to shoot you at night. It is much the same in Iraq. Ricks tells us about yesterday's attack:

Several experts noted that insurgents appear to have acted on accurate intelligence. Kalev Sepp, a former Special Forces counterinsurgency expert who recently returned from Iraq, noted that the attack "was carried out in daylight against the largest facility on the base, at exactly the time when the largest number of soldiers would be present."

"This combination of evidence indicates a good probability that the attack was well-planned and professionally executed," Sepp said.

And like Vietnam the Americans can't trust anybody.

A byproduct of such a strike is that it tends to drive a wedge between U.S. personnel and the Iraqis who work on the base. "I think that this tells us first that our base facilities are totally infiltrated by insiders who are passing the word on when and where we are most vulnerable to attack," said retired Marine Col. Edward Badolato, a security expert.

Let's not let the politicians wait 4 more years to admit they made a grave mistake. It's time to get out NOW, the American presence is part of the problem and American soldiers can't be part of the solution, only targets.