Topic: Iraq
So, things are once again going swimmingly in Iraq. This week there have been over 150 bodies found scattered all over Baghdad showing signs of torture; suicide bombings are at an all time high; Muqtada al-Sadr is losing his grip on the Madhi Army, because he's too moderate; we've lost 20 US troops since last Sunday; and the new judge overseeing the "trial" of Saddam has lost his brother-in-law, who was shot on a Baghdad street yesterday.
The big trench the Iraqis are building around Baghdad is almost complete and the government has issued another one of its famous curfews banning not only vehicular travel, but also pedestrian traffic. That's a new one. In a puzzling development, the commander of US forces in Anbar province told the press that the insurgency will be defeated but not by the US military. Army Col. Sean B. McFarland said,” An insurgency is a very difficult thing to defeat in a finite period of time. It takes a lot of persistence --- perseverance is the actual term we like to use. If we get the level of violence down to a point where the Iraqi security forces are more than capable of dealing with it, the insurgency's days will eventually come to an end. And they will come to an end at the hands of the Iraqis, who, by definition, will always be perceived as more legitimate than an external force like our own." [Inquirer]
Wow, you know, with unlimited time and resources we could beat the insurgency, too. Of course, if we just wait long enough, these insurgents we're fighting now will simply die of old age; we just have to wait them out. Rummy says, "ultimately they will fail. It's going to take time, and its going tot take a lot of hard work by people who believe in freedom." Unfortunately, the people he's relying on to keep up the fight are the same few hundred thousand that he keeps sending back there to fight again and again.
But, there's good news on the horizon. AP reports that the UN issued a report this week saying that "al-Qaeda's activity will diminish as violence escalates and distinctions blur among sectarian attacks, criminal acts and the fight against Iraqi and non-Iraqi forces." Boy, that's good to know. [AP]
As bad as things are though, Bob Woodward tells 60-Minutes this week that it's worse than we know. Surprisingly, it turns out that the Bush Administration is covering up just how bad things are in Iraq and he says we should expect it to get much worse next year. "It's getting to the point now where there are eight-, 900 attacks a week. That's more than a hundred a day. That's four an hour attacking our forces. The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse, and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon saying, 'Oh, no, things are going to get better.'" [AP]
How could that be? I don't believe it! This administration wouldn't lie, would they? Sounds like the enemy's propaganda to me.
