38 US Soldiers Dead in Falluja. Why?

In a live interview from Falluja on November 11th, the Washington Post’s embed, Jackie Spinner, answered a question from a viewer in Boston, MA who asked, “What do we do when we take Falluja?” Spinner said, “No one I've talked to believes that solving the Falluja problem will end the violence in Iraq. But, as one Marine officer told me, not solving the Falluja problem will not end it either.” So what the hell are we doing there, you may ask. The short answer is: We have killed US soldiers and Fallujans to put a man in the White House. In 2000 President Bush was not elected in his own right. The War in Iraq gave him a legitimacy he never would have had without it. The offensive in Falluja was a campaign ploy to sell George Bush as a war-time President who needed to finish the job. The fact that it was over-hyped and over-sold during the last weeks of the Republican campaign doomed it to failure. We gave the insurgents a war-plan, a map as to what we were going to do, where we were going to do it and how. Thirty-eight American soldiers are dead because the team in the White House used their unnecessary war as a plank in an election platform. How cynical is that! And if a cynic is one who believes that human conduct is wholly motivated by self interest, Republican majority leader, Senator Bill Frist proves the point. He said on Sunday that 74-year-old Arlen Specter, who has been a loyal GOP Senator for 24 years “needed to convince his fellow Republicans that he deserved to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee”. This stern rebuke to a standup foot soldier of the Republican party came about because Specter had the temerity to suggest that the GOP plan to hijack the Congress and Senate would not be an easy coup. What kind of gang-banger proof of allegiance will be required of Specter? Must he smear a Democrat with lies to show he’s one of the BushBot boys? Must he once again swear that the spurious findings of a questionable commission (such as the Warren Commission) is actually beyond reproach? Or must he humiliate himself in public? What proof of loyalty will satisfy the White House? Oh surely not that. Even the Repugs wouldn't ask that of their true believers. Would they?