It’s sort of like throwing more gasoline on a fire in an effort to put it out.

“Incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday he would support a temporary troop increase in Iraq only if it were part of a broader strategy to bring combat forces home by early 2008,” reports the Associated Press. Harry Reid and the Democrats, looking ahead at the 2008 selection and beyond, understand now is the time to cast about with diluted antiwar rhetoric, even as they nod in the direction of Bush’s “surge” in Iraq.

Most recently, the “surge” concept—basically, throwing more troops into the Iraqi meat grinder—was tweaked by the neocon Frederick Kagan, brother of Robert Kagan, sidekick of top drawer neocon Bill Kristol, “resident scholar” at the American Enterprise Institute, where Bush gets his “minds,” and member in good standing over at the Council on Foreign Relations, the neolib coven. Kagan has teamed up with retired Army General Jack Keane, a former member of the neocon infested Defense Policy Board and director over at the death merchant General Dynamics, and they spelled out their version of the “surge” on the pages of the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post.

According to this neocon duo, the United States is losing Iraq because of lukewarm “half measures” and the only response is “to change the military mission,” make it “both long and large” by sending in another 30,000 or so troops. Size matters, we are told, no matter the U.S. military “has become dangerously overstretched because of the scale of its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,” according to two reports released earlier this year. In essence, this is a repeat of William Kristol’s September Washington Post op-ed piece, where he called for more troops to be poured into Iraq to “improve our chances of winning a decisive battle at a decisive moment,” requiring “a substantial surge in overall troop levels … with the additional forces focused on securing Baghdad,” where a billion dollar plus “fortress-like” embassy, essentially a huge Fort Apache, is under construction, using low-paid and exploited Asian workers under the control of First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting.

As Kristol tells us, there “is now no good argument for not sending more troops,” never mind the above worries about breaking the back of the U.S. military. Kristol’s insistence has nothing to do with “democracy” for Iraqis, but is of course instead hitched to the larger neocon plan for the neighborhood, most notably Iran. Kristol cites Harvard Law School’s William Stuntz, who doubles as a scribe for the Weekly Standard: “The territory over which we fight is among the most strategically important in the world. Victory will place the most dangerous regime on the planet, Iran’s fascist theocracy, in serious peril. Defeat will leave that same regime inestimably strengthened. If there is any significant possibility that the presence of more American soldiers on the ground would raise the odds of success, not putting those soldiers on the ground is a crime.”

Of course, sending the troops in the first place, predicated on lies and dissimulation, is a crime, defined as such by international law, but then neocons don’t do international law, especially after “everything changed” when Muslim cave dwellers mutated the laws of physics, a quite normal occurrence in Bushzarro world.

Kristol and the neocons, however, contrary to the blather of Reid and the Democrats, are calling for a long-term “surge,” designed to last out the remainder of Bush’s term, and longer of course, well into the next selected administration’s term, as the Democrats, positioned to win the game of presidential musical chairs, will not “cut and run,” lest they be viewed as lily-livered liberals in short pants. Kristol elaborated on December 24:

Naturally, the Democrats are onboard with more murder and mayhem, never mind the arguments over the duration of Bush’s “surge,” designed to last for the foreseeable future. Not only was mildly antiwar Jack Murtha bounced as possible House majority leader, clearing the path for the warmonger Steny Hoyer, but Nancy Pelosi chose Silvestre Reyes as House Intelligence Committee chairman. Reyes, unable to tell the difference between Sunni and Shi’ite, told Newsweek, “We’re not going to have stability in Iraq until we eliminate those militias, those private armies. We have to consider the need for additional troops to be in Iraq, to take out the militias and stabilize Iraq … I would say 20,000 to 30,000 — for the specific purpose of making sure those militias are dismantled, working in concert with the Iraqi military.” As if to make sure the deck is stacked even more against the desire of the American people—who, by large numbers, want the U.S. out of Iraq—the Democrats kissed the toes of the Bush crime family intimate, Iran-Contra criminal, and consummate liar and twister of intelligence, Robert Gates, who, as the newly minted Secretary of Defense, will make sure the neocons get their way.

Obviously, in order to tell the truth, one has to be far away from the whorehouse, that is to say the halls of Congress, White House conference rooms, and the inner offices of the State Department. Recall Colin Powell, who fondly refers to Kristol and the neocons as “fucking crazies,” on December 17 telling CBS that a troop increase “cannot be sustained.” In short, Bush’s “surge” will be a disaster, but then the neocons deal in disaster, as their master plan is to use up the U.S. military in an effort to destroy the Arab and Muslim Middle East, as the Israelis demand.

“A faction [more specifically, a neocon faction] in the Pentagon among the U.S. commanders in Iraq has been promoting the surge option to useful journalists such as Michael Gordon of the New York Times. In the Pentagon itself, sentiment is against the ’surge,’ at least if you want to believe a report in the Washington Post. In the Pentagon, they know there are no troops available, making people serve longer tours promotes mutiny, and 30,000 more troops would make no difference,” notes the San Francisco Chronicle (see previous link).

But then the neocons running the Iraq “war” are not interested in making a difference—they are primarily concerned with working up a violent lather that ultimately splits the nation into at least three distinct pieces. As well, they need troops positioned for the spillover effect of the coming attack against Iran, on tap before the unitary decider exits office, or rather steps off the throne, as he was not elected in the first place.