The plans the pentagon is making for when Bush's latest 'brainstorm' fails.

Jeff Huber at Pen and Sword

Pentagon planners are so confident in the Iraq "surge" strategy that they're planning on what to do when it fails.

From Sidney Blumenthal of Salon:

Deep within the bowels of the Pentagon, policy planners are conducting secret meetings to discuss what to do in the worst-case scenario in Iraq about a year from today if and when President Bush's escalation of more than 20,000 troops fails, a participant in those discussions told me. None of those who are taking part in these exercises, shielded from the public view and the immediate scrutiny of the White House, believes that the so-called surge will succeed. On the contrary, everyone thinks it will not only fail to achieve its aims but also accelerate instability by providing a glaring example of U.S. incapacity and incompetence.

I don't know who Blumenthal's sources inside the bowels of the Pentagon are, but my gut instincts tell me they're right. My instincts also tell me they're right to keep their planning initiatives under wraps, because as Blumenthal also says:

The profoundly pessimistic thinking that permeates the senior military and the intelligence community, however, is forbidden in the sanitized atmosphere of mind-cure boosterism that surrounds Bush. "He's tried this two times -- it's failed twice," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on Jan. 24 about the "surge" tactic. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.'" She repeated his words: "'I told them that they had to.' That was the end of it. That's the way it is."

Holy Hannah. I'm a subscriber of Mark Twain's assertion that history doesn't repeat itself but it sometimes rhymes. Young Mr. Bush is starting to "sound like" another lunatic who sat in a bunker and only listened to generals who told him what he wanted to hear.

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One more thing to thank Dubya for...

Thanks to all the bloodletting in Iraq there is a new strain of virulent drug-resistant microbe being spread around the world.

Nicole Bell of Crooks & Liars

Okay, normally, I tend to discount the hysterics surrounding new pathogens, but this one does scare me quite a bit and just adds more fuel to the fire of my belief that we have screwed up this country enough and need to get out.

Raw Story: (h/t Rasputin)

A drug-resistant bacteria that is infecting wounded US soldiers in Iraq — and has spread to civilian hospitals in parts of Europe — accidentally evolved in US military hospitals in Iraq, Wired Magazine will report in a massive expose on Monday, RAW STORY has learned.

The several thousand word expose is set to bring uncomfortable new light to the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii that Pentagon officials previously said was likely a product of Iraqi soil.

And TRex at Firedoglake

In many ways, the Bush Administration's "War on Terror" has been able to accomplish things that the terrorists themselves could only dream of. It has divided the American public against each other. It has stretched our military so thin that we would be helpless in the face of a real national emergency. And now, it has bred its own drug-resistant biological weapons, one of which is rapidly making its way through civilian hospitals from California to Canada, on to Germany and Anbar Province. It's called acinetobacter baumannii and the US military not only created the conditions that led to its development, but the Pentagon has played an active role in exporting it to the world and in the suppression of information that could have led to its containment.

[...]like every other problem that has arisen in our nation's prosecution of the Bush Administration's "Great War on Terror", rather than deal with the issue in a frank, open, and effective manner, the government has chosen instead to lie, obfuscate, and cover up, thereby placing more and more lives at risk.

Fun things that will result from the coming "escalation".

George is in a pissing match he's losing. (Ever notice how wars really come down to whose 'stick' is bigger) So George is going to try to make his longer. Unfortunately you and I are the ones providing the 'length' and our troops are going to take it in the neck.
clammyc at Booman Tribune

The escalation will be primarily for fighting al Sadr and his militia but may also be used for “policing” in an attempt to control the genocide from continuing to spiral out of control.

[...]

Why taking on al Sadr will be disastrous

For starters, let’s start with the fact that despite what has been said about Maliki and Sistani looking to marginalize al Sadr, the opposite is more likely closer to the truth. In fact, the above link as well as this one seem to indicate that al Sadr and his followers are about to strike a deal to return to the Iraqi parliament.

And regardless of whether he is authorizing or the source of rampant killing and violence against Sunnis, there is the small matter of him being (1) a figure that has a vast loyal following and (2) is a big part of the “democratically elected” Iraqi government – regardless of whether Bush and his minions want it to be so. The ancillary issues with respect to a military operation to take out a member of the Iraqi government – and one whose family has a city named after them would have repercussions that, from a political standpoint, would be a nightmare for the US. If you thought that our reputation in Iraq couldn’t get any worse, just wait until “war is waged” against al Sadr.

There is also the matter of this being a horribly kept secret. Take into account the fact that al Sadr’s militia is estimated to have around 60,000 fighters and they aren’t just a bunch of “dead enders”:

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