Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, fifty-four inch wide GORILLA?

General Abizaid seems to be channeling Goldilocks. In a Senate hearing yesterday he told Democratic Senators that withdrawing troops from Iraq would increase sectarian violence. Then, in response to questioning from Maverick John McCain about increasing troops by about 20,000 men (as he's been pushing on the Tim Russert circuit,) Abizaid answered that our "troop posture needs to stay where it is" in order that the Iraqi government stands up and fills the gap on it's own. Apparently the porridge is just right.

Which is odd because most of us find this administration's Iraq porridge recipe nauseating at any temperature.

Here's a thought: when you are occupying a country that has an unemployment rate with estimates ranging from 28% all the way up 70% then the level of troops you send in to help administer order might be wholly meaningless. That's a heck of a lot of dissatisfied people who have nothing to do but sit around, get angry and look for somebody to blame. The leap towards violence isn't so great when you take that into consideration.

Which is why our economic policies and aid to Iraq following the war was at least as important, if not moreso, as our military strategy. Those of you who have some sense of U.S. policy in the twentieth century and recognize the genius that was the Marshall Plan are probably breathing a sigh of relief. Don't. You'd be forgetting that this is the Bush administration formulating our policy here. They don't learn from history they MAKE history. Or some other such nonsense.

Conservatives have waited decades for an opportunity like that presented in Iraq- a chance to demonstrate to all that conservative economic principles work. They looked at Iraq like Dr. Frankenstein staring at a slab of recently exumed body parts. "Finally a chance to show the world I'm not crazy!"

(Insert evil crazy laugh here)

The dust from the defeat of the Iraqi had hardly cleared before the conservative mad scientists snapped on their surgical gloves, got out their scalpels and got to work. They implemented a flat tax of 15% (exempting foreign companies doing contract work in Iraq,) made sure organized labor was deterred by making all of Iraq a "right to work" state, employed the cheapest labor possible (read: non-Iraqis) and pretty much sent blood and body parts flying as they worked deep into the night.

Is it any wonder they wound up creating a monster? Now their creation is advancing on the town, leaving the bodies of villagers and constables in it's wake and they want to quibble about how many torch-wielding townspeople we're going to send out to meet it?