It pained me last night that Obama was quoted as saying that the surge has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. That’s the message of the Bush administration, the Pentagon and the mainstream media who haven’t bothered to investigate.

Project Censored has helped to pull back the curtain on the awful truth about the invasion and occupation by listing as the Number One censored storie for 2009: Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation:

Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.

As a result, the flow of refugees has not abated. Iraq is a hellhole:

Iraqis’ attempts to escape the violence have resulted in a refugee crisis of mammoth proportion. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration, in 2007 almost 5 million Iraqis had been displaced by violence in their country, the vast majority of which had fled since 2003. Over 2.4 million vacated their homes for safer areas within Iraq, up to 1.5 million were living in Syria, and over 1 million refugees were inhabiting Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and Gulf States. Iraq’s refugees, increasing by an average of almost 100,000 every month, have no legal work options in most host states and provinces and are increasingly desperate.

Yet more Iraqis continue to flee their homes than the numbers returning, despite official claims to the contrary. Thousands fleeing say security is as bad as ever, and that to return would be to accept death. Most of those who return are subsequently displaced again.

Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail quote an Iraqi engineer now working at a restaurant in Damascus, “Return to Iraq? There is no Iraq to return to, my friend. Iraq only exists in our dreams and memories.”

Eventually the truth will rise up and hit us in the face. That time is coming.

While it may be true that the Republicans have been reading Sun Tzu for election strategy, it is equally obvious that Bush and Cheney have not read it in connection with the Iraq invasion and occupation.

Throughout The Art of War, Sun Tzu manifests appreciation for the awsome costs of military engagement. He especially warns against a prolonged war, which brings about the ruin of a nation.

Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished. (II:10)

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When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue." (II: 2-4)