A New Reality

John McCain's floor speech on Iraq today was a return to the "we've turned the corner" lie that characterized the first 3 1/2 years in Iraq. He cobbled together a series of stats and omitted the more ominous ones to portray what he literally called "a new reality," where Gen. Petraeus is boldly moving forward with his counterinsurgency plan, making Baghdad and Iraq safe for democracy. He's decided we've turned around Iraq and that we just need a few more dollars and a few more good men to secure it completely.

This is absolutely absurd. This Green Lantern strategy of "if we will it, we can win" has gone on for too long and has produced next to nothing. We're putting more troops into the conflict, and yet we're winning. The surge has already been surged twice. If we're doing so well, why are we adding troops with each passing day?

Here's the new reality in Iraq: there isn't any clean water.

United Nations agencies working in Iraq warned on Thursday a chronic shortage of safe drinking water risks causing more child deaths and an outbreak of waterborne disease such as cholera during the summer.

There's no water. That's reality. This is a country that is largely desert and there's no water that's safe to drink.

Four years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, millions of Iraqi children still find that safe water is no easier to access, said a statement issued by leading U.N. aid agencies operating in Iraq.

The agencies, whose offices are based in Amman, issued the statement to mark World Water Day.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said shortages of drinking water threatened to push up diarrhoea rates, particularly among children. Diarrhoea is already the second highest cause of child illness and death in Iraq, it said.

"Latest reports suggest we are already seeing an increase in diarrhoea, even before the usual onset of the diarrhoea season in June," said Roger Wright, UNICEF representative in Iraq.

The reality has caused children to die because they get sick from drinking water. This is the new reality. The reality you cannot hope to ever see. The reality you cannot hope to admit because it would mean you have the lives of 3,200 US troops, but millions of children, on your consciences.

Efforts to repair Iraq's damaged water networks have been hampered by electricity shortages, attacks on technicians, infrastructure and engineering works and underinvestment in the water sector, the agencies said.

Iraq was still relying on U.N. support to provide essential water treatment chemicals with UNICEF alone providing 1,650 tonnes of chlorine last year, the statement said.

The suspension of water tankering services to tens of thousands of people in Baghdad, especially to displaced families and communities hosting them, increased the risk of cholera outbreaks, the agencies warned.

4 million Iraqis have either been killed, displaced, sickened, or never born due to living daily with war for over four years. That's the new reality. It's disgusting to suggest that there's any kind of surge to victory going on. It's a surge to the morgue.

When you live on the streets of Iraq like an average citizen, and realize that it's 110 and you won't be having anything safe to drink for the next week, you tell me about reality. You can look at facts and figures and numbers and body counts and twist them up into making a decision that you are succeeding. But you don't get to call that reality. You can call it statistics. You can call it trendlines. You'd be wrong. But to have the temerity to suggest that there's a new dawn, a new reality that nobody can see but Sen. McCain, is as irresponsible as the Administration was for years. It's amazing to see the same zombie lies pop up over and over again.

(UPDATE: Here are some of the lies of Huckleberry Graham in his "me too" speech on the floor: "This is the first congress ever to set a hard date to withdraw from a war" - um, not true, little thing called Kosovo - "It took 13 years to write our constitution" - no, it took a few months to write the Articles of Confederation, they didn't work and so it took a few months to write the Constitution, and by the way who's James Madison in Iraq? - "If you had the courage of your convictions, you would amend to stop funding by a date certain" - which is what the House did, and Huckleberry slandered that, so it's just a talking point)

"There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. There is no military solution in Iraq. Iraq belongs to the 25 million people who live there." -Chuck Hagel, just now.

UPDATE: Here's that new reality for you, John, courtesy Michael Ware in Baghdad:

Honestly, Wolf, you'll barely last twenty minutes out there. I dont know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.

Video at the link.