“I hate it when they say, ‘He gave his life for his country.’ Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.”
Admiral Gene LaRocque

Dog-tired days of summer: Five US soldiers died Saturday south of Baghdad in what was described as a “complicated” trap sprung after a sniper shot and killed one GI, then led his company into a booty-trapped house, where a pressure-triggered bomb killed four others. Another four were wounded. Details haven’t been released, but odds are most were under age 25.

US military officials said the scheme employed was relatively new for Iraq, and blamed Al-Qaeda, but the ages-old bait and lure tactic has been a factor in guerrilla/insurgent maneuvers an extremely long time. Just ask the joyous, party-loving Trojans. Or an arrogant, blood-lust-filled Custer at the Little Big Horn.

In Iraq, though, this “new” and intricate operation could be way aided by the startling physical and psychological fatigue of US troops in a conflict now longer than the entire first world war and longer than US involvement in the second. This war is a twisted, horror tale.

Three percent of US causalities has been through suicide. Although Decider George in practice doesn’t seem to care, his little military adventure has become unlike all others in its continuing intensity and its “blowback” on the GI. A major medical problem arising in Iraq is sleep-related disorders.

An alarming article posted this past Sunday at observer.guardian.co.uk/world reflected a cruel, historical-Twilight Zone-type effect taking shape in Iraq among the rank and file where the war zone has become a center-of-the universe reality with days on patrol facilitated by Red Bull. The real-reality of freakin’ boots on the ground.

The reporter, Peter Beaumont, illustrated an overwhelming fatigue: “A whole army is exhausted and worn out. You see the young soldiers washed up like driftwood at Baghdad’s international airport, waiting to go on leave or returning to their units, sleeping on their body armour on floors and in the dust.”

In another part of the story and in another part of Iraq, a soldier married to a soldier told Beaumont: “My husband was injured here. He hit an improvised explosive device. He already had a spinal injury. The blast shook out the plates. He’s home now and has serious issues adapting. But I’m not allowed to go back home to see him. If I wanted to see him I’d have to take leave time (two weeks). And the army counts it.”

And elsewhere: “A week later, in the northern city of Mosul, an officer talks privately. ‘We’re plodding through this,’ he says after another patrol and another ambush in the city centre. ‘I don’t know how much more plodding we’ve got left in us.’“

The Guardian piece just demonstrates an US military spread so thin and weakened by such terrible direction what will happen when it breaks? Helicopters lifting off the roof of the US embassy in Baghdad? A disastrous, Napoleon-like retreat into Kuwait?

 Decider George for sure needs more cannon fodder. He required direction last fall (the shithead really could have used an ass-kicking-direction as far back as the early 1970s) and sought to appoint a kind of “war czar,” who would oversee the ongoing nightmares in Iraq and Afghanistan. After several retired generals turned down the job — who would want to be captain of the Titanic after it struck the ‘berg — Decider George eventually gave the spot to Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute. Last Friday, Lute gave his first interview since he got the nod. He told National Public Radio a military draft is possible if the two-front war continues unabated.

Although Lute said it would be a “major policy shift” for Decider George to field a conscripted army, “I think it makes sense to certainly consider it. And I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table. But ultimately, this is a policy matter between meeting the demands for the nation’s security by one means or another.”

Open mouth, insert poo-poo. On Monday, the Pentagon said Lute was full of shit, and a return to the military draft has not always been “an option on the table.”

Military flak Bryan Whitman retorted: “I can tell you emphatically that there is absolutely no consideration being given to reinstituting the draft. The all-volunteer force has surpassed all expectations of its founders.”

Dipshit! The problem is not an all-volunteer force. The crisis comes from direction and sense. Since seemingly everybody from Decider George’s backers, Demos and GOPers running for president, anyone with a mouth in Washington, contend a serious US military presence in Iraq is required for years to come, from where will the needed troops come?

Certainly, not from the loins of Decider George, Dufus Dick Chaney, AG Alberto “Don’t Recall” Gonzales and a over-extended number of others, including Bubba Karl Rove. And freakin’ speakin’ of the Bubba: So long and fare thee well.

He quietly gave a resignation scoop to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday and now the guy who practically invented “dirty tricks” in politics will be able to spend some quality time with his family, write a few books and teach.

Ain’t that so freakin’ sweet.

If the sonofabitch wasn’t a war criminal, liar and arrogant asshole who has been throwing dirty bombs on the American people since the late 1960s, we here at Compatible Creatures might be inclined to be nice to the asshole.

Bubba Karl and Decider George have been big butts together since the mid-1970s when Bush senior introduced his useless, cocaine-addled son to the budding dirty-propagandist. Now more than 30 years later, they’ve nearly destroyed the US Constitution and created a bloody, endless worldwide catastrophe.

Two arrogant butt-hole clowns. Bubba buddies.