Bush Administration 'Creates' Reality: Iraqis Call It a Nightmare

I have no idea why we're in Iraq. None of the rationales proposed by Bush or any of his surrogates have ever made sense when tested against what is actually happening on the ground. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein was only a worthwhile goal if something better replaced him without draining the US treasury at the same time.

Bush keeps pushing the public relations side of the war and maybe that points to the only thing that explains why we went to war: the war in Iraq managed to win Bush and his Republican friends two elections, the 2002 midterm election and the 2004 election. Iraq might win him a third election if he can just put the right spin on it before November.

No doubt the recent spin by Republicans that Iraq is safer than some US cities is part of the spin. Sabrina Tavernise of The New York Times offers a portrait of a small part of Baghdad that suggests the more upscale part of Baghdad that Republican tourists might have visited once upon a time is not entirely open for business (hat tip to Swopa of Needlenose):

...Mansour, a religiously mixed area just three miles from the fortified Green Zone, feels more like wartime Beirut than Park Avenue, and its affluent residents worry that the wave of violence that has devoured large swaths of Baghdad has begun encroaching on them.

"It's falling to the terrorists," said Hasaneen F. Mualla, director of the Hunting Club, Mansour's social center. "They are coming nearer to us now. No one is stopping them."

(snip)

The paralysis that shut down life in western Baghdad is creeping ever closer to the heart of the city, and Iraqis in still-livable areas are frantic for the government to halt its advance, something the new leadership pledged to do when it started its new security plan for Baghdad last week.

"It's like a cancer, spreading from area to area," said a guard at Delta Communications, a Mansour cellphone shop that has been shuttered since a bomb blast in front of it last month.

Mansour is an area of stately homes, elaborately trimmed hedges and people who can afford guards. In recent weeks, that has not seemed to matter. Homemade bombs have struck two sport utility vehicles belonging to the former Iraqi exile leader, Ahmad Chalabi, a Mansour resident, twice in the past month. Gangs have kidnapped the United Arab Emirates ambassador and the Russian Embassy workers, whom Al Qaeda claimed to have killed this week. The Hunting Club now tells wedding parties to bring guards.

"These middle- and upper-class families, these guys are not willing to fight," one resident said. "It's like cutting into butter."

(snip)

The owner, who refused to give his name, blamed the Americans for the security troubles, an opinion expressed by many in Mansour — Shiite and Sunni alike.

"If the Americans want to destroy Iraq, they are on the right path," said the owner, a Shiite, who stood scowling behind a candy counter. He displayed a pistol jammed in his waistband. "If they can't improve things, they should just leave us alone."

Mansour is still considered one of the safer areas of Baghdad.