Our long national nightmare has only just begun. 

The Decider accepted responsibility for past mistakes in what I’m sure his handlers saw as a “buck stops here” sort of moment.  But admitting to mistakes is only relevant if you plan to … well, try and correct them!  It does me no good whatsoever to hear Bush admit that he has blundered thus far and then tell me he is going to continue blundering because, by gum - it’s gotta work one of these times. 

Cue the rest of the speech.  Short version: More Troops + Cowboy Hats = Big-Time Victory.  And he really, really means it this time.  Seriously, no takebacks.  Oh yeah, we gotta attack Iran and Syria too. 

True to his word, George W. Bush, devoid of a shred of popular support and clearly lacking the legal authority to declare war, waited only a matter of minutes before invading sovereign Iranian soil last night in the first strike of a war against Iran.  Oh, and in the process even managed to gather up some Iranian hostages for a nice little photo-op. 

Fortunately, the Dems still seem to have some of their post-election spine left and are threatening to block the escalation.  James E. Clyburn, the House Majority Whip, gets today’s award for pithiest sound-byte with “Twenty-one thousand five hundred troops ought to have 21,500 strings attached to them.” 

On a personal note, I have no intention of flooding the internets with yet another prognostication of impending doom in the escalation.  It seems like most of congress, the military, the American people, and plain common sense know where this is heading.  But regarding logistics, I can’t seem to wrap my head around where georgie pulled this number from? 

Let me put this in perspective.  Baghdad is roughly 81 square miles to which Dear Leader plans to deploy an additional 17,500 troops.  Given that these people will have to sleep at some point, I estimate an additional 144 soldiers per square mile who could be active at any given moment.  If distributed evenly across the city, this kind of blitz could certainly create a heightened military presence in the urban confines escalating the severity of martial law while creating the added bonus of increasing the visibility and volume of juicy targets for the insurgency. 

Now take the Anbar Province, a Sunni stronghold of approximately 53,000 square miles to which Junior is assigning an additional 4,000 troops!  This allows for one additional for every 13 square miles!  In official military terminology, the effect this could likely have on a porous region is known as “Bupkis,” not to mention that in either case, we can expect the 46 or so disparate groups comprising the “insurgency” to continue their normal modis operandi of guerilla tactics which include ceding territory when appropriate, forcing the enemy to spread themselves thin, and then attacking the weak points. 

If I’m sounding like “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” it’s because troop escalation is a bad idea!  I know it, you know it, the Generals know it – hell, my Schnauzer knows it!  The time for military solutions has long evaporated.  Bush has not committed nearly enough troops to pursue containment in the Anbar Province, and if any temporary reduction of body counts are achieved in Baghdad, such photo ops will be paid for with the dispersal of a once concentrated threat. 

But hey, at least Bush gets to distract us from the fact that he invaded Iran last night.