NO MILITARY SOLUTION IN IRAQ, SAY U.S. COMMANDERS

It's time for the U.S. to get out of Iraq -- because the insurgency cannot be defeated by the force of American arms. Who says so? Why, the U.S. military leaders on the ground in Iraq, who flat-out contradict Bush administration claims that the war against the insurgency is being won. Those are the findings in a stunning report in this morning's Philadelphia Inquirer. Here's what the Inquirer's Tom Lasseter found after talking to a raft of U.S. commanders:

"A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. troops in the last two years. Instead, officers say, the only way to end the guerrilla war is through Iraqi politics - an arena that has been crippled by divisions between Shiite Muslims, whose coalition dominated January elections, and Sunni Muslims, who are a minority in Iraq and form the base of support for the insurgency.

"'I think the more accurate way to approach this right now is to concede that... this insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations,' Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said last week, echoing other senior officers. 'It's going to be settled in the political process.'

"Gen. George W. Casey, the U.S. commander in Iraq, called the military's efforts 'the Pillsbury Doughboy idea' - pressing the insurgency in one area only causes it to rise elsewhere. 'Like in Baghdad," Casey said last week. "We push in Baghdad - they're down to about less than a car bomb a day in Baghdad over the last week - but in north-center [Iraq]... they've gone up. The political process will be the decisive element.'

"The recognition that a military solution is not in the offing has led U.S. and Iraqi officials to signal they are willing to negotiate with insurgent groups or their intermediaries. 'It has evolved in the course of normal business,' said a senior U.S. diplomatic official in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of U.S. policy to defer to the Iraqi government on political matters. 'We have now encountered people who at least claim to have some form of a relationship with the insurgency.'

"The message is markedly different from statements by U.S. officials who spoke of quashing the insurgency by rounding up or killing 'dead-enders' loyal to former dictator Saddam Hussein. As recently as two  weeks ago, in a Memorial Day interview on CNN's Larry King Live, Vice President Cheney said he believed the insurgency was in its 'last throes.'..." Read the rest of Lasseter's eye-opening report from Iraq by clicking here.

This reality check on the Bushie's mad claims that victory is near in Iraq comes to us on the same day that, as USA Today reports this morning, disenchantement by Americans with their country's occupation of Iraq is at the highest levels ever -- and 59% now say that the U.S. should withdraw some or all of its troops from Iraqin the latest Gallup poll.

The paper notes that "In the Gallup Poll, 56% say the Iraq war wasn't 'worth it,' essentially matching the high-water mark of 57% a month ago." But it also points out that those who continue to say the war was worth it do so becase they still buy the myth that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 -- a belief flatly contradicted by the findings of ex-GOP Gov. Tom Kean's 9/11 Commission. Even the Bush administration has been forced to admit there was no Baghdad-9/11 connection. Yet so powerful was the Republican propaganda machine's insistence on this connection that it lingers, for as USA Today went on to say this morning: "Of the 42% who say the war was worth it, the top reasons cited are the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the need to stop terrorism and a desire to end the oppression of the Iraqi people"

Yesterday, on ABC's This Week, Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., an ardent supporter of the invasion, called on Bush for a timetable for withdrawing troops. "I feel that we have done about as much as we can do," he said.

But, as usual, the cowardly Democratic leadership in Congress is failing to seize this moment when public opinion would support withdrawal from Iraq. Just two weeks ago, Marin County Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (left) forced a vote on her resolution requiring the Bush administration to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But this common-sense proposal was torpedoed with the help of the House Democratic leadership -- Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the supposed "liberal," and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer both led 79 House Democrats in voting to kill the Woolsey withdrawal resolution.