Mission Impossible In The New Vietnam

More troops are to be sent to their deaths on a fool's errand in the Afghan killing fields. Obama is set for a Mission Impossible surge with poodle Brown behind him, pinning hopes on everything coming up roses in time for crucial elections.

Both Washington and London are spinning an 'end game' to dupe a war-weary public on both sides of the Atlantic in a blatant election ploy.

After months of dithering, a rerun of the disastrous Bush/Blair Iraq debacle is on the cards with an increasingly sceptical public left to pick up the pieces.

Der Spiegel put it well: Obama's rallying call to the nation felt like "a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric, leaving both dreamers and realists feeling distraught."

Here Brown doesn't blink without first running it past Washington. Singing from the same hymn sheet, the outline of a 'timetable' has been carefully set up to keep the folks sweet.

Obama's popularity is plummeting. Mid term elections are looming. A president who built up hopes closing Gitmo, only to dash them, plans to end the war by getting in deeper.

Public approval for Obama's war has taken a nose dive with noticeable opposition from within his own Democratic party.

It's Vietnam all over again. The Taliban are the new Reds. Johnson and Nixon have been replaced by Bush and Obama who like Nixon promised to 'end the war' by getting in deeper.

Ahead of Obama's 30,000 troop surge, his poodle Brown got in early with 500 more UK troops and a few lamentable excuses, throwing in everything including the kitchen sink.

In a desperate search for a reason, Brown too is embroiled in a bitter battle to win over hearts and minds and capture the hopeless argument in the run up to the general election.

Apparently the armed forces now have the equipment needed to send in more troops. That begs the questions: why were ill-equipped troops sent to their deaths in the past? Shouldn't the right kit and proper support be in place before a country decides to wage war in a far off land?

Bogeyman Bin Laden popped up again as public enemy number one, with Brown urging a new push to hunt him down. Er, wasn't that what they were supposed to be doing ever since 9/11?

Now Brown has repeated his old con that sending in more troops will help keep the streets here safe. Poppycock. The London underground bombers were British not Afghan and trained in Pakistan not Afghanistan.

To top it all, there's a wonderful pre-election photo-op in January with an Afghan London summit.

As Obama and Brown embark on a fool's errand with mission impossible, some fools may be fooled by the spin. The Orange Party isn't. A US pull out, timed to coincide with election campaigns, is a despicable way to use the lives of brave troops for petty party political ends.

The sheer pace of Obama's military deployment mimics Bush's 2007 troop surge in Iraq. But the war-mongering pair can send as many troops as they can, it won't make a jot of difference. This is is an exercise in futility and failure.

People feel duped by a hopeless unwinnable half-hearted war now at stalemate. Opinion polls in the UK resonate with those in the US.

But Brown's government has bound itself to Obama's war, fought with all the fervour of Bush neo-cons, right down to the surge. An accelerated timetable with a built-in endgame smacks of electioneering.

As with Iraq, MPs have been duped, this time with a promised hand over to Afghan control. Oblivious to tribal allegiances of corrupt Afghan security forces, more troops will be sent to their deaths. A high price to pay to prop up corrupt and discredited Karzai.

But stepped-up 'training' for Afghan forces will allow Brown and Obama to claim everything is hunky-dory, just in time for those elections back home.

NATO and other allies will have to contribute additional troops to a war that is deeply unpopular in Europe. Setting out a rough timeframe is a sure sign of mounting concerns on Capitol Hill. But how Obama intends to pay for his escalation is left in the air with the extra cost put at around $30 billion.

Supporting a corrupt Afghan government by adding more troops is a fool's errand. As in the UK, the US public is waking up to the fact that the Afghan Taliban is not a direct threat to the US or UK. The threat comes from Islamic fundamentalists trained in Pakistan. The public has no stomach for Brown and Obama's war.

Like Bush and Blair before them, the new warmongers are doomed to failure in a hopeless, unwinnable war. Once again the public is being taken for a ride with the olive branch of an 'end game'.

Stubbornly refusing to learn the lessons of Vietnam, the Blair/Bush legacy of Iraq and now Afghanistan will come back to haunt them. And like in Vietnam and Iraq, it is troops and civilians who will suffer and bear the brunt of a bloody taste for war.

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Mr Brown Goes Off To 'Terror' Town

When the going gets tough, the tough get going and in the case of Battered Brown, to the safe and heavily fortified sanctuary of Camp Bastian, with some useless rhetoric playing the "terror" card and playing politics with troops set to be sent to their death in Afghanistan's bloody, hopeless and unwinnable war.

Maybe there are just not enough problems to wrestle with back home. After all, the country is delighted by his Darling's budget, his MPs' expenses solution to pay them more for turning up for work has gone down a treat and that pesky Downing Street e-petition calling for his resignation isn't really democracy at work, now is it?

In a classic case of positive spin slipped into a report, which smacks of stealth reporting, the BBC's Nick Robinson, travelling with the PM, said: "He [Brown] believes that the big increase in troop numbers - particularly Americans - should be accompanied by the same strategy that succeeded in Iraq".

So what hard evidence is there that the big troop numbers was a "success" in Iraq and that a similar surge will succeed in Afghanistan? How is success measured - by the numbers of dead?

Once again Brown seems to have photocopied a White House memo which apparently would do just fine for the folks back home. But this isn't the US Army Mr Brown. Just copying Obama doesn't make it right.

 Is this a softening up signal for yet more of our troops to be sent to war as part of his pre-election politics?



When things are not looking good, the Supreme Leader has a habit of popping up in Afghanistan's Helmand province to have his photograph taken with our boys and girls. Nice pictures shame about the policy.

After talks with Afghan president, Corrupt Karzai in Kabul, the Dad's Army prime minister announced "a new strategy" for dealing with terrorism across the tribal border areas with Pakistan, warning of a "chain of terror" starting "in the mountainous region and ending in capital cities worldwide."

Corporal Brown said Britain could not "sit by" and do nothing: “Security in these mountainous border areas, which may seem distant and remote from home, will mean more security in Britain ”

Really? What exactly was the 'old' strategy? The recent Easter 'bomb plot' to blow up Britain has been exposed as bunkum. Wouldn't sending more troops to the new Vietnam just make things a tad worse? And you and who's army Mr Brown? The army serves the monarch. Parliament should decide major troop deployments, not an arrogant tin-pot dictator.

Obama's announcement to send 17,000 more US troops for the Afghanistan war as part of a Spring surge, raised a few eye-brows among US liberals and raised the vexed question here of how many more UK troops will be sent to their deaths.

War mongering Bush and his poodle Blair, will live with their legacy but would Brown come over all lovey-dovey for Obama's war? The answer was out of the Iraq frying pan and into the Afghanistan fire - with nearly a thousand troops to be sent for the Afghan August elections on top of the 8000 already there.

The reticence over troops numbers revealed a rift between the gung-ho MoD and its band of ministers and the foreign office and ministers who take a more sanguine approach, as Brown struggles to toe the Washington line.

The Orange Party makes no secret of it distaste for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the way the Blair government sucked up to the Bush regime, now followed by Obama's Brown poodle.

Sickened Labour stalwart, Alice Mahon who recently quit the party in disgust summed up the mood of many: "Brown has just announced plans to send another 900 troops to Afghanistan, billions to be spent on an unwinnable war and pensioners dare not turn on their heating because this Government will not tackle the energy fat cats.''

It seems McCavity Brown has done his usual trick of running away from problems on the domestic front. Meanwhile the mood at Westminster and in the country over the fantasy budget is turning decidedly cold and chilly. It's still unclear just how he's going to wriggle out of his much derided MPs' expenses non-solution. The Downing Street e-petition, calling for his resignation, is growing by the day.

UPDATE 5pm: Brown's jolly jaunt to Pakistan was dealt a blow after he was snubbed by the president and had to make do with the more junior prime minister. Stop laughing at the back.

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Obama Backs Down On Iraq Troop Pledge

Obama loving liberal Americans have been sent in a tizz as the shine starts to fade on their Chosen One and his election pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq has turned out to be a damp squib. War-mongering Bush is being replaced by Obama and his shameful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That leaves a bitter taste for those taken in by the hype. 

Over here, C4 News, the BBC and Guardian must be having kittens trying to justify the watered down turnaround. No doubt they'll swallow the line from the White House spin.

Obama has announced the withdrawal of some US troops in Iraq by August 2010, leaving a massive army of around 50,000 Marines and soldiers out of the 142,000 troops at present occupying the country and calling the shots. 

The occupation army will stay in Iraq after that date to "advise Iraqi forces and protect American interests." They will remain until December 31, 2011, the date on which the Bush administration had already agreed to withdraw all troops under a pact with Iraq.

And that sits very uneasy with Obama's election promise that he would completely pull out troops within 16 months of taking the job.

Democrats are not happy that the troop withdrawal is being watered down. Even speaker Nancy Pelosi said 50,000 troops seemed too many for a residual force and needed to be justified.

Yet in the crazy world of Obama hype and doublespeak, the Republicans are lovin' it and McCain is Obama's new best friend. 

Here our own foreign secretary, David Miliband, who has been visiting Iraq, said he found a "real yearning... for Iraqis to run their own affairs, to make their own mistakes but also to make their own progress". 

For once the Orange Party completely agrees with this overgrown schoolboy.

Iraq is being kept under the thumb by a multi billion pound private army of security 'consultants' and massive US bribes to militia groups to switch sides in return for the Yankee dollar. 

50,000 is a hell of a lot of US troops to be fighting an illegal war in a country desperately wanting to make a start on its own destiny, regardless of the fractious in-fighting that's bound to happen as Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds align, realign and square up to each other. 

Earlier this month, Obama ordered  up to 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan to support a new surge in that bloody, hopeless and unwinnable war. That's all starting to sound suspiciously like the despised foreign policies of the Bush years. 

Obama has now taken ownership of these wars. Afghanistan is his new Vietnam.

Here the government never had the guts to stand up to Bush and Blair will be forever branded as his poodle. 

As the timetable in Iraq and Afghanistan continues to be dictated by the White House, it's looking increasingly likely Brown will just become the poodle in Obama's wars. But just because Obama thinks it's right, doesn't make it right.

The dreadful lessons and legacies of that Bush and Blair partnership are set to repeat themselves, unless Brown can stop himself firmly embroiling this country in shameful US foreign policy.

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Brown's The New Poodle In Obama's War

Obama's pseudo-liberal luvvies have been sent in a spin with their idol sending 17,000 more US troops for the bloody, hopeless war in Afghanistan. That raises the vexed question of how many more UK troops will be sent to their deaths in this unwinnable war. War mongering Bush and his poodle Blair, will live with their legacy but will Brown come over all lovey-dovey for Obama's war?

Normally an announcement from the US and the UK on troops would go hand in hand. But not in this case.  

Ministers were quick to point out today that the US hasn't made a request for more troops. But that begs the question exactly who is calling the shots? 

Doesn't the UK government have the guts to decide its own foreign policy when the lives of our troops are at stake. 

But Obama's war has found a new poodle in Brown and his war-mongering ministers as the government is poised to send more troops to their deaths. What is unclear is what deals are being struck and what trade-offs are happening behind the scenes. 

The reticence reveals a rift between the gungo-ho MoD and its band of ministers and the foreign office and ministers who take a more sanguine approach. And with troops holed up in Iraq, the country doesn't have the capacity to increase troop numbers.  

Gradually it has dawned on politicians and generals that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Obamaland was supposed to see beyond the superficially muscular policies of the Bush era. But nothing changes. 

Predator drone attacks on the Pakistan border have been increasing since Obama's presidency, softening up for a spring offensive when an even larger influx of US forces is expected,  ahead of the warmer weather and national elections in August.

But we are fighting a war with no winners, only casualties, reduced to reporting deaths by numbers. 

Few politicians speak out. Instead they prefer to sit back and take the lead and the line from the US. 

It's difficult to get a true picture of the scale of fighting and even more difficult to get a rational idea of the legality and purpose of the war. 

Reporters are stuck embedded with troops and pushing the agenda set by the MoD and newsdesks back home. Reduced to reporting without rocking the boat. 

Images of well-equipped foot soldiers on urban street patrols don't tell the real story. The real war is a hard, dirty, dangerous, hopeless war, happening well out of sight of these staged publicity stunts. 

It's a war fought by the elite regiments and special forces, operating from lightly defended forward bases and easy targets to pick off. Soldiers call them them the 'invisible' enemy,  who strike and then melt into the hills. 

But the MoD, politicians and generals don't want to admit that the new Vietnam is happening now in Afghanistan. 

It took a long time for the US to come round to the harsh reality that the Vietnam war could never be won. We should heed that lesson now.

The Afghans swap allegiances to suit the circumstances. The mountainous terrain makes a mockery of any idea that an Iraq-style troop surge can succeed. As in Vietnam, tanks are useless in the terrain, so what's left is target bombing and special forces patrols and elite forces, operating from lightly defended forward bases.  

In Afghanistan, there are powerful tribal loyalties, a strong culture and centuries of tradition of non-urban guerilla warfare.  

The 'enemy' come from the north and transcend the meaningless borders between Afghanistan and the modern state of Pakistan. People with those tribal loyalties and centuries of tradition fighting invaders, don't recognise an artificial border drawn on a map.

The UN said the number of civilians killed in the conflict in Afghanistan rose last year with US, Nato and Afghan forces responsible for 39% - the highest number since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

Behind the scenes, the Obama administration is putting intense pressure on the UK to reinforce failure and send yet more troops.

But there has been no public debate about this. Not a single mainstream politician has questioned why so many of our soldiers are being sent to their deaths, or what purpose is being served by  the war. 

While defence secretary Hutton, is pushing for the extra troops, foreign secretary Miliband  seems sceptical. 

As with Iraq, the Orange Party has made no secret of its distaste for these wars and firmly believes that a war can never be won in Afghanistan. UK troops should be pulled out now before it's too late. 

The war has alienated the very people we need on our side - the Afghan people while targeting Muslim rebels plays into the hands of Al Qaeda propaganda.

Obama wants only one thing from the UK: more of our troops. 

At the moment the UK is on the verge of what is likely to be an additional military deployment without any public debate or parliamentary approval. 

The lessons and legacies of the Bush and Blair partnership are set to repeat themselves with Brown firmly embroiling the country in Obama's war.

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Brown's Afghan Coat Looks Threadbare

More troops are to be sent to the killing fields of Afghanistan, as Brown embarks on a private war to win the hearts and minds of the public. Setting out to save the world from economic doom is one thing. Trying to convince sceptical voters he can save the world from 'terrorism' is quite another. While Downing Street pushes the Afghan line, Brown's Afghan coat is looking distinctly threadbare. 

What Downing Street and Brown fail to realise is that public and media support for our troops is not the same as support for a hugely expensive, bloody, mad and hopeless war, which no-one can understand. 

The sight of Brown grinning and posing for Christmas photographs with our boys and girls in Helmand was a sickening spectacle, as the prime minister was forced to think up an excuse for being there, while paying tribute to brave soldiers killed in action. 

Then the Orange Party warned, that by using the lame excuse of a 'war on terror', the government is spinning its way out of the Iraq frying-pan into the new Vietnam of the Afghanistan fire. And the public and many backbench Labour MPs can see through the sham. 

Sending more troops to the front-line is only the beginning as Brown obeys orders from Washington and sucks up to president-elect Obama, as part of a US surge against the so-called Tailban.

Bush had only a pair of shoes to duck, Blair can hide behind his faith and no drama Obama will say whatever he thinks the American public want to hear. But the 'saviour of the world' is now grovelling around for excuses to get the public on side and on message. 

The megalomania hold no bounds as Brown now seems to have taken change of everything and ordered preparations for more troops to be sent in time for the Afghan presidential election.


Using the argument of 'being at war there makes us safer here' didn't work in Iraq and won't work in Afghanistan. But, as in Vietnam, the turning point will come only when the body bag count reaches a due sense of outrage. 

Brown, as chancellor, took the country through a false economic boom on a lie, while prime minister Blair took the country to war on a lie. Brown had a taste for crafty accounting, Blair a taste for war. 

It seems the prime minister as master of the universe is setting out his stall out to save the world from everything and everybody. But try telling that to tribal Afghans and global Islamic terrorists. 

And try telling that to voters at this time of economic hardship, when any fool who has read a history book knows waging war in Afghanistan didn't work for the British Empire, didn't work for the Soviet Union and won't work for a country which wants something better than the awful legacy of another war.

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Hold On Tight, McCain Could Just Win

Hold onto your seats. This could be a roller coaster of a ride. The fat lady hasn't even cleared her throat ready to sing, yet the media and opinion polls have all called it for Obama. But they don't count for zit. The media isn't electing a president nor are the opinion polls, American voters are. And the race is tightening by the day.  

Take away the media bias and opinion polls and the odds suddenly start to stack more in McCain's favour. 

Opinion polls, even the RCP average, are a snapshot of opinion of a very small sample. They are not voter intentions set in stone. 

There are just too many balls up in the air. Race, religion, the Bradley factor, the Florida factor, Obama's lack of experience and background. How can a snapsho opinion poll mean anything? If you want a prediction, a horoscope is far more entertaining.

Even taking opinion polls on face value, Obama needs a consistent double digit lead throughout the RCP average in order to win. The predicted landslide doesn't stack up.

Today, the Republican favoured and in the past accurate IBD/TIPP daily tracking poll shows McCain on 44.6%, Obama 46.7% with 8.7% undecided. Independents are shifting from Obama to McCain, who's making inroads in the midwest.

Obama hasn't shifted much in the polls since the summer. McCain's numbers have gone up and down like a yo-yo. 

And then there's Hillary, with her huge PUMA support base. A large number of Hillary's gals and guys may tactically vote McCain. Clinton's shot at the presidency in 2012 needs a McCain win. These Democrats, who have never forgiven Obama, are strung across the States and statistically their votes could swing it.

There's a huge mass of undecided voters too. They will decide only on the day they actually vote. 

They have been targeted by the hornet's nest of Obama's background and associations, summed up today by Stanley Kurtz of NRO. 

No matter who or what you believe, mud sticks. And there's an awful lot of mud flying around. All part of the McCain strategy to drip-feed Obama's experience, background and credibility to sway those undecided.

Former Sunday Times editor, Harold Evans, delivered a damning indictment of the blatant media bias towards Obama. American folk are no fools either. The media may think and hope they have the result in the bag. They are not the same as the regular American voter. 

Then there are the battleground States, where the election is actually decided. Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. All in Obama's bag. Now all tightening. 

Even tracking polls are putting McCain and Obama tied among independent voters. A week ago, Obama was leading.

Much has been said of the youth vote who have turned out in their thousands as Obama cheerleaders. In Florida, where 3.4 million people have already voted, only 15 per cent of them were under age 35.

The media has rightly focussed on the huge and highly successful Obama effort to actually get voters to turn out to vote. But they have ignored the almost legendary Republican effort. 

While it would be naïve to discount race, this is much more a cause for the media than voters. Regular Americans don't give a stuff about the race of their president. It is only a serious issue among a few voters in a very few States.

Many naively compare the US election to a UK general election. They are two quite different beasts. 

In the US, voters vote for a president-elect. There could easily be a Al Gore moment. Even if Obama 'wins' the popular vote, he could still lose the state by state electoral vote, the magic 270, and with it the presidency. The president isn't sworn into office until January. That's a long time in politics. And that's why Hillary is playing it cool. 

Voters vote for a president and vice-president on the same ticket. The VP's sole job is to be on standby and fill a dead man's shoes. 

Voters have to decide, whoever is president, do they want Biden or Palin as president-in-waiting. And that makes for a whole different ball game.

Each US voter jealously guards their citizenship and is intensely patriotic. Voting for McCain or Obama boils down to a straight choice. Who will make the strongest commander-in chief and who will have the most trusty hand on the economic tiller. 

And that could boil down to an equally straight choice between an experienced politician, not tarred with the Bush brush, over a smooth talking guy with hopes and dreams and a slick Chicago marketing machine behind him.

The media has completely underestimated McCain and got totally carried away with Obama. That maybe their downfall. But then journalists, like opinion polls can always get it wrong.

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Is McCain Planning An October Surprise?

Much of the media think the US election is a done deal. Politicians and newspapers are falling over themselves to throw their weight behind Obama. This may be the new Independence Day for liberal America but both sides know it's not over until the fat lady sings and McCain could spring an October surprise. 

The misguided line taken by much of the Obama supporting media was encapsulated well in yesterday's Guardian. Obama is riding high in the polls, his campaign fund is breaking all records and to top it all, Colin Powell has final come out in support. Victory is now a forgone conclusion, champagne has been ordered and the party invites sent out. 

Sorry to be a party pooper, but all three gleefully seized on by the media were not seized upon by the Obama campaign team. All three show Obama's weaknesses. His campaign team know this and were quick to play them down. 

A lead of 5.8% as shown by the RCP average does not spell victory with 14 days still to go. Al Gore was down by 5.5 points on October 21. Still down on election day, Gore went on to win the election but lost the presidency. By this polling day, it could well be neck and neck.

Swollen campaign funds is not a sign of support, it just means Obama has been much sharper. While both camps signed up to use public funds for the campaign, Obama tore up the agreement and used private funding sources instead, something Obama has admitted, putting him at a huge financial advantage. 

Obama is already on dodgy ground over his private funding which does not come under the same close scrutiny as using taxpayers cash, except funds which are suspected of coming from outside the US. 

Powell's support was greeted with a strange sort of glee by the media. Powell is a dove not a hawk but, as Bush's poodle, he helped take the US and UK to war on a lie and lied to the UN over Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, based on dodgy photographs, discredited yellowcake and a debunked Iraq dossier. 

His support for Obama was seen by some as a black American brotherhood, something Obama has been very careful to avoid and that may galvanise some support for the Republicans. 

Obama's task between now and November 4 is to keep his cool, drive home the simple and consistent message of change and hope and make these remaining undecided voters comfortable with his background. 

Obama has a few tricks up his sleeve to assuage voters, like the publicity stunt taking time out to "visit his sick grandmother" in Hawaii.

McCain of course will try to do the opposite. Make voters feel uneasy and uncomfortable, while casting himself as a safe and trusted pair of hands. This has been drip-fed, ratcheted up and ratcheted down throughout the campaign.

Until recently, it suited McCain to be the underdog. After all, there are two in this Republican marriage and Palin is the attack dog. 

The line of attack on links with ex-domestic terrorist, William Ayers, and other dodgy characters from Obama's Chicago past, may have run their course. 

There's still some mileage left in his links with black power pastor, Jeremiah Wright, but voters can be turned off by too much negative campaigning so close to the finishing line. 

McCain's October surprise will focus on Obama's inexperience, credibility and background, probably all three rolled into one. Sowing the seeds of that unease with the millions of undecided voters to make them throw a wobbly before they finally have to make up their minds. 

What will McCain use as the hook to hang this on? The McCain team is not giving the game away but it may have something to do with Berg's lawsuit over Obama's citizenship which is currently being blocked by Obama and the DNC.

Many think and hope it's a done deal and this election's outcome is set in stone. Both Obama and McCain know that nothing could be further from the truth. 

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