Bush government Iraq Urban legends "grassroots volunteers" aka "concerned local citizens"

As with all of its sadly successful campaigns, the Bush administration has rolled out a series of urban legends (which are dutifully being repeated by the press and Republican candidates for President and after a while these "facts" echo in people's brains as "the truth" told by a friend of a friend) on the "success of the surge in Iraq" Let's look at just at one of the components of the " surge's success" which is being touted by American military commanders and Bush himself- This is the claim that a "grassroots " movement of "volunteers' are spreading peace through Iraq due to their own love of democracy and good will towards men. (:Here's the military's press release on the subject: http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?Itemid=128&id=14596&option=com_content&task=view)

You will never hear the US military or the Bush folks mention the fact that the 77,000 Sunni alleged "volunteers" are being paid with US tax dollars at a rate of $300 a month (nearly 300 million a year).

Here's the truth about the "volunteers" according to the MidEast for Coexistence Website : " In Baghdad, the US military enlisted the help of civilian volunteers to fight common enemies such as Al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army, the militant Shiite group commanded by Moqtada al-Sadr. There are currently almost 70,000 of these volunteers countrywide. They volunteers are officially known as "Concerned Local Citizens," and are given salaries and uniforms by the Americans. In reality, many of them are former insurgents, which makes the Shiite government nervous and detracts from the Manichean moral narrative preferred by Bush's speechwriters."
"(http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000653.htm) Those of us who want to see peace in Iraq don't have a problem with Iraqis helping keep the peace, but here's the question-why are military commanders and the Bush government lying about the fact that they aren't volunteers (any more than anyone who applies for a job with benefits is a "volunteer"), they aren't part of a grassroots movement-they are being recruited, and they are often former insurgents-so the US is paying salaries to folks who don't like the current Iraqi government, who may have fought against the US during the occupation, and who may take their new uniforms and guns and turn them on either the Iraqi government, the US military or both. This is yet another reason to bring our troops home now- if we want to pay Sunnis to protect their neighborhoods (which is an idea that was suggested by an Iraqi refugee to me over 2 years ago) then let's pay them without setting up yet another situation (see the history of Afghanistan) where we arm a population only to have them turn the weapons we paid for on us down the road.