Etalkinghead

The New York Times is reporting today that the anti-American uprising in Iraq is much broader than the Bush administration is acknowleding.

“United States forces are confronting a broad-based Shiite uprising that goes well beyond supporters of one militant Islamic cleric who has been the focus of American counterinsurgency efforts, United States intelligence officials said Wednesday.

That assertion contradicts repeated statements by the Bush administration and American officials in Iraq. On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that they did not believe the United States was facing a broad-based Shiite insurgency. Administration officials have portrayed Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric who is wanted by American forces, as the catalyst of the rising violence within the Shiite community of Iraq.

But intelligence officials now say that there is evidence that the insurgency goes beyond Mr. Sadr and his militia, and that a much larger number of Shiites have turned against the American-led occupation of Iraq, even if they are not all actively aiding the uprising.”

This fits the pattern that the Bush administation has established since taking office. Their ideological blinders are firmly in place and their fingers are stuck in their ears so as not to hear any evidence that contradicts their rosy assertions of Iraqi’s welcoming the occupying forces with showers of rose petals at their feet.

Just as the Bush team ignored intelligence reports prior to the war that expressed doubts about Saddam Hussein’s weapons arsenal, they are now ignoring reports of how widespread the insurgency is in post-war Iraq. This can only lead to a greater number of U.S. casualties as we continue to underestimate the challenges we are currently faced with.

It should be clear by now that the Bush administration never had the foggiest clue about what they were getting us into with this Iraq invasion and occupation.