Wow, Donald Rumsfeld said the other day in an interview with Faux News’ newsreader Chris Wallace that “We’re not going to win against the insurgency”. I’m jaded enough now not to be surprised that such a statement has blown completely past the media with hardly a comment about this tacit admission of impotence by the SecDef. However to have the media pretty much completely spin it as a comment about Iraqi sovereignty surpasses credulity.

Consider if you will such a statement being made by Kerry were he President, or by his SecDef, or by Howard Dean or by any prominent Democrat. The outrage directed at such an admission of defeat, an admission that our troops are not up to the job, would be cacaphonous. “Treason” would be the least of the charges thrown about.

Yet bush’s SecDef can admit that our troops can’t defeat the insurgents (while the Veep keeps saying the insurgency is in its last throes) goes unremarked upon.

Talk about supporting the troops, what kind of message does that send to the soldiers in the field? Hey troops! Your own chain of command says your there just to die to hold the insurgents at bay until the Iraqis can do the job. It is the ultimate insult to our soldiers, far worse than anything Durbin or Dean have ever said.

And I wonder how the families of the dead and wounded soldiers feel knowing that the Pentagon boss has just admitted that we aren’t there to win, that victory cannot happen with our soldiers, that they just aren’t up to the job, that they are there dying and being maimed as a holding action?

Now, I’ve thought all along that just invading the country was an insult to our soldiers because the entire premise upon which the invasion was based (regardless of which proffered premise you choose to believe) was false and they went there to defend a lie, not to defend this country. But the neocons have played up our commitment to “victory” so much lately that such a statement by their SecDef has to be the ultimate slap in the face to the troops.

And yes, I know he went on to say “the Iraqis will defeat the insurgency” (which is the spin, that we are building up the Iraqis, that we are just there to “help” them). But I can’t believe anyone on the ground there actually believes the Iraqis will be able to secure their own country, now that we’ve thoroughly trashed it, anytime soon.

He also went on to make the wonderfully specific statement that it could “go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years.”

So apparently the bush “plan” is to embroil our armed forces in a decades long fight in the desert they cannot win costing thousands of casualties, bankrupting the country morally and economically, destroying the military as an effective fighting force, sending the clear and unambiguous message to terrorists that we can be tied into knots with a few suicide bombers and IED’s (a term I hate, the damn things are bombs for chrissakes), our country fearful and cautious, our international reputation and influence destroyed, possibly for good, and our economic power reduced to debtor status teetering on the brink of collapse…and all for very little investment on the part of the terrorists.

They get all this satisfaction on the cheap. I’ve not seen any data on this specifically but it would be interesting to know just what the estimates are of the cost of battling our military to a standstill. I’m betting we are spending 20-30 times as much as the “insurgents” (and the price in lives is incalculable) and now we are told we can’t win.

That’s some plan you got there George.