How bad will this get?

Paul Craig Roberts , the former Reagan official, writes that Bush turned his back on the U.S. establishment and has thrown his lot in with the Israeli Neocons. He has crossed the Rubicon. This means that the U.S. will now attack the Shiites in Iraq and/or Iran. This will lead to a slaughter of U.S. forces that will spark calls for revenge by the U.S. public. Revenge on whom, though? Will the U.S. public blame Iran or Israel? This explains the defensiveness of the Israel lobby with respect to Jimmy Carter's book. According to Roberts, the plan by the neocons is to commit genocide against the Arabs, having the U.S. do the dirty work for Israel.

...When word leaked that Bush was inclined toward the "surge option" of committing more troops by keeping existing troops deployed in Iraq after their replacements had arrived, NBC News reported that an administration official "admitted to us today that this surge option is more of a political decision than a military one." It is a clear sign of exasperation with Bush when an administration official admits that Bush is willing to sacrifice American troops and Iraqi civilians in order to protect his own delusions.

The American establishment, concerned by Bush's egregious mismanagement, moved to take control of Iraq policy away from him. However, recent news reports and analysis suggest that Bush has turned his back to the American establishment and his military advisers and is throwing in his lot with the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby. This will further isolate Bush and make him more vulnerable to impeachment.

...Raed Jarrar (CounterPunch, January 4) suggests that the Shi'ite militias, such as the one led by Al-Sadr, are the intended targets of the "surge option." There seems no surer way to escalate the conflict in Iraq than to attack the Shi'ite militias. For longer than the US fought Germany in WW II, 150,000 US troops in Iraq have been thwarted by a small insurgency drawn from Iraq's minority population of Sunnis. It hardly seems feasible that 30,000 additional US troops, demoralized by extended deployment, can succeed in a surge against the Shi'ite militias when 150,000 US troops cannot succeed against the minority Sunnis.

The reason the US has not been driven out of Iraq is that the majority Shi'ites have not been part of the insurgency. The Shi'ites are attacking the Sunnis, who are forced to fight a two-front war against US troops and Shi'ite militias and death squads.The US owes its presence in Iraq, just as the colonial powers always owed their presence in the Middle East, to the disunity of Arabs. Western domination of the Muslim world succeeded by not picking a fight with all of the disunited Arabs at the same time.

Attacking the Shi'ite militias while fighting a Sunni insurgency would violate this rule. If Bush ignores US military commanders and expert opinion and accepts the surge option advanced by the delusional neocon allies of Israel's right-wing Likud Party, US troops will be engulfed in general insurgency. This is why General John Abizaid resigned on January 5. He wants no part of the Republican Party's sacrifice of US soldiers to sectarian conflict.

...Bush is like Hitler. He blames defeats on his military commanders, not on his own insane policy. Like Hitler, he protects himself from reality with delusion. In his last hours, Hitler was ordering non-existent German armies to drive the Russians from Berlin.

By manipulating Bush and provoking a military crisis in which the US stands to lose its army in Iraq, the neoconservatives hope to revive the implementation of their plan for US conquest of the Middle East. They believe they can use fear, "honor," and the aversion of macho Americans to ignoble defeat to expand the conflict in response to military disaster. The neocons believe that the loss of an American army would be met with the electorate's demand for revenge. The barriers to the draft would fall, as would the barriers to the use of nuclear weapons.

Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz set out the plan for Middle East conquest several years ago in Commentary Magazine. It is a plan for Muslim genocide. In place of physical extermination of Muslims, Podhoretz advocates their cultural destruction by deracination. Islam is to be torn out by the roots and reduced to a purely formal shell devoid of any real beliefs.

Podhoretz disguises the neoconservative attack against diversity with contrived arguments, but its real purpose is to use the US military to subdue Arabs and to create space for Israel to expand.

Not enough Americans are aware that this is what the "war on terror" is all about.

This is unprecedented. White House sources leaked that Bush insisted on the escalation option against the unanimous opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff! Then General Abizaid resigns.

Here is Xymphora:

If the full Baker plan is followed, it is the death of Israeli colonialism, and the end of Wurmser’s Zionist Plan for the Middle East. The surge – a completely ridiculous, completely Vietnam-esque, plan of doing more of the same thing which has caused all the problems in the first place – is intended to slow up American withdrawal until it has been ensured that Iraq will have to break up (if American troops withdraw now, the danger is that Iraq will stay intact under Iraqi control, or – shudder – under radical Iranian control). The surge is presented as a workable alternative to the Baker plan, and is intended to replace the other dangerous Baker ideas, including settling the Palestinian problem and making nice with Syria and Iran, all in a last-ditch effort to protect the interests of the American Establishment in the Middle East. The stakes are thus extremely high – the death of the American Empire versus the death of the dream of an Israeli Empire. If Bush opts for a surge, it will prove that the American Establishment is so weak and decadent that it no longer deserves its empire.

Two powers, the United States and Israel with deadly weapons and ruthless spies, in a fight to the death. This does not bode well.

Mutinies in the field, coups in the capitol, detention of top administration officials, even civil war. It doesn't sound so far-fetched any more.