Retired military officers are legally allowed to speak their minds without penalty...

...and when they do, it's a very different tale than that told by the Oval Office Idiot (full of noise and statistics and signifying nothing but an increasingly hysterical fear of 'What if I'm not re-elected?')

Excerpts from an interview with Retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Bernard Trainor* and retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner** conducted by Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: What do these new figures say ... I mean, we heard Secretary Rumsfeld say, 'well, it's a sign of the progress the U.S. is making and they're desperate.' Is it that, or is it a sign of rising instability?

GEN. TRAINOR: Well, I think that anybody that tries to put a good face on this situation-- that they're desperate-- they're just whistling in the dark. This insurgency is going on, it's growing, it certainly has no indications of being an act of desperation at all.

What? Is it possible? Defense Secretary Redrum doesn't know what's going on? Or worse -- he knows but is making up bedtime stories to tell us? Could it be? But wait, there's more:

COL. GARDINER: ... the number of attacks per day, last October it was around 20. At the hand-off, it was 35. This month it was 87 -- numbers of attacks on the oil pipeline -- January and February, less than five; June, 16; August, 20; September, high already.

The numbers aren't good. The numbers show that the insurgency is getting worse. We seem to have turned the corner, and it's getting worse.

MARGARET WARNER: What's fueling it?

COL. GARDINER: There probably are a number of things, Margaret. One of them is we did some bad things. We made some enemies. The way we treated people in prison, knocking down doors. We insulted them as part of the hard line earlier. That's first.

The second thing is there are people now in Iraq from outside. The Iranians are involved, people are coming in from Syria, so that the insurgency is being fueled from the outside.

... I saw a picture from Baghdad yesterday in Sadr City of the young man with a rocket- propelled grenade. It was brand new. I've never seen that... them carrying brand-new, rocket- propelled grenades. There's something going on here other than that guy had that in his closet.

... and still more -- the entire interview is at the site link above in the headline and also here.

Read the whole thing and perhaps you'll agree with my theory -- which is possibly not even as bizarre and fantastic as the entire war scenario being put forth by the Coup d'Fou currently in office:

Dubya was running Poppy's re-election campaign in 1992 and decided the loss (ratings plummeting from 89% at the end of Desert Storm) was due to the war ending too soon. So he and his unholy crew decided -- this time around -- keep it going as long as possible, because they NEED to keep it going, NEED to hold on to their power.

Wm Burroughs, in Naked Lunch, discussing total need (the dollar figures are from 1954):

I recall talking to an American who worked for the Aftosa Commission in Mexico. Six hundred a month plus expense account:

"How long will the epidemic last?" I enquired.

"As long as we can keep it going.... And yes.... maybe the aftosa will break out in South America," he said dreamily.

Sound anything like the endless Axis of Evil? Do you remember the other banner stretched out below the masturbatory one that declared "Mission Accomplished?"

It said, with all the bravado of a man who will never need to risk his own life:

WHO'S NEXT?

They're addicts, and incompetent, and they need an intervention followed by a long quiet period of isolation and rehab.

*General Trainor is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and co-author of "The Generals' War," a book about the 1991 Gulf War.

**Colonel Gardiner teaches military operations and planning, and is a longtime consultant to the Defense Department.

(The interview was found through the Blogsite Ambidextrous, which posted and linked it before me.)

Link