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Ambition meets delusion.....

It now seems that the US is in Iraq for the long haul. How long? Who knows? - except that, according to George Bush in his recent address to the nation, it will be beyond his term of office. Bottom line, it looks like I started the mess but someone else can clean up after me!

And those positives in Iraq that Bush and little-echo Australian Foreign Minister Downer speak about? It seems it's all myopic and slanted to meet the ambitions of General Patraeus - as The Nation reveals in this piece:

"We now learn that General David Petraeus fancies himself a Dwight Eisenhower for the 21st century.

According to a report in London's Independent newspaper by the reliable Middle East observer Patrick Cockburn, the U.S. military viceroy in Iraq would like very much to return from his mission and -- like the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II and of North Atlantic Treaty Organization in its aftermath -- mount a bid for the White House.

Petraeus has apparently been so open in expressing his "long-term interest in running for the US presidency" that Sabah Khadim, a former senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry who worked closely with the general in Baghdad, recalls, "I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'."

Such are the political calculations of the man whose embrace of President Bush's war has become so complete that he and his aides have radically altered the manner in which statistics are gathered on violence in Iraq in order to foster the fantasy that the fight has taken a turn for the better."

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