Lynching Won't Help U.S.

By Eric Margolis
Toronto Sun

"The bungling of Saddam's trial and execution hurts America's reputation.

Just when it seemed the Bush-Cheney Administration couldn't drag America's reputation any lower, it did.

The U.S. is now being rebuked around the globe for delivering President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to a Shiite lynch mob.

Washington professed surprise and denied blame for this disgusting, gruesome atrocity. But Saddam had been under U.S. guard in a U.S.-run prison in the U.S.-run Green Zone. What did U.S. officials think the mob of U.S.-backed Shiite thugs intended to do with Saddam? Give him a parade? ....

By contrast, the UN's new South Korean secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who was shoe-horned into office by Washington, shamefully supported Saddam's execution even though the UN has long opposed the death penalty. An inauspicious start for a timid yes-man....

Good, responsible presidents know when to listen to their generals, and when to retreat from stalemated or lost wars. If Bush does send thousands more troops to Iraq, he will be risking more American lives in a desperate, 11th-hour political gamble to show voters he has a new plan to resolve the horrible mess in Iraq he created.

Twenty or thirty thousand more U.S. troops thrown into the cauldron of Iraq will make little military difference. One hundred fifty thousand or more might, but the U.S. has run out of soldiers.

If Bush pours more troops into this -- a lost war -- he will fall into the trap of many bad gamblers who double up their bets in a reckless effort to recoup previous losses.

Bush continues ignoring his generals while still heeding the siren song of the neo-cons around him. Their goal is not advancing America's interests, but totally destroying Iraq, then Iran.

Sen. John McCain, the current Republican presidential front-runner, has joined Bush and Cheney in urging more troops be sent to Iraq. All three have clearly lost touch with reality and their nation's basic values.

Call it Saddam's curse."