How's the surge working, Senator McCain?
Today near Taji, U.S. forces killed four insurgents in an air strike. Whoops. "[T]wo women and two children were also believed to have been killed." Oh, but surely things are going better in Baghdad. There U.S. forces said they killed three insurgents in an operation in Sadr City. Whoops again. According to Reuters, residents said three people were killed, including a pregnant woman and a 70 year-old man, and seven wounded during the operation.
Surely, you say, you're leading with the bad news. Well:
BAGHDAD - The bodies of 18 people were found shot in different districts of Baghdad on Wednesday, police said.BAGHDAD - Two people were killed and two wounded when gunmen opened fire randomly in Hurriya district in northwestern Baghdad on Wednesday, police said.
BAGHDAD - Two car bombs killed one person and wounded three others in Bayaa district of southwestern Baghdad, police said.
*** BAGHDAD - At least six people were killed and 15 wounded in a car bomb blast near Baghdad University and the Al-Hamra Hotel in the Jadriya district of southern Baghdad, police and Interior Ministry sources said.
*** BAGHDAD - Two people were killed and 11 wounded when mortar rounds landed in the Shi'ite Abu Dshir district of southern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed two people and wounded 10 near the Shorja market in central Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - At least eight people were wounded by a mortar attack in two different districts of Baghdad on Wednesday, police said.
How are things out in the boonies?
KHALIS - Ten Iraqi soldiers were killed and 15 wounded, including civilians, when a suicide bomber rammed his car into an Iraqi army checkpoint in the town of Khalis, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.TIKRIT - Gunmen killed the sister-in-law and niece of Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein's cousin who was dubbed "Chemical Ali", in Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
NEAR MOSUL - At least three people were killed and 59 wounded in three separate blasts in a town near Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, a local official. Two truck bombs and a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt targeted local offices for the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
* MAHMUDIYA - Two mortar rounds killed a woman and wounded three others when they struck a home in the town of Mahmudiya, just south of Baghdad, police said.
KIRKUK - Gunmen wounded five people when they threw grenades at a cafe in the northern city of Kirkuk, 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
BASRA - Yousif al-Moussawi, the general-secretary of the Shi'ite Tharallah Islamic Party in Basra, said he had escaped unhurt from a grenade attack on his house in Basra, 550 km (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, on Wednesday. One of his guards was seriously wounded.
* MAHMUDIYA - Police said they found the body of a man in the town of Mahmudiya, just south of Baghdad.
General Petraeus had these comforting words:
"I don't think you're ever going to get rid of all the car bombs," Petraeus said. "Iraq is going to have to learn -- as did, say, Northern Ireland -- to live with some degree of sensational attacks." A more realistic goal, he said, but one that has eluded U.S. and Iraqi forces, is to prevent bombers from causing "horrific damage."http://www.delawareo...
Whenever we hear self-servers such as Gen. Petraeus (even Baghdad is worth a fouth star) congratulate themselves on the "breathtaking" progress of the "surge" in Anbar Province, it is worthwhile to scour the news wires as you have just done to provide an antidote based on reality.
It is also worthwhile to recall classical guerrilla theory: "When the enemy advances, withdraw." Gen. Petraeus may well be confusing the hunkering down of insurgents in Anbar with his own desire to claim military success.
And when guerrillas hunker down for a while, it sometimes means that they are husbanding their resources and laying their plans for a major action.
In Baghdad, Diyali, and Anbar, I'm expecting insurgents to strike several exposed U.S. outposts simultaneously. In the past two weeks they have made devastating practice runs on two such outposts. This is the downside of Gen. Petraeus's strategy of creating such exposed outposts as part of his surge.
Yes, that's her.
Overall, a solid majority of Americans (59%) continue to say they want their representative to support a bill calling for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq by August 2008, while just a third want their representative to vote against such legislation.What the two sides share is reluctance to compromise. Most supporters (54%) of a timeline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq say they want Democratic leaders to insist on that position rather than work toward an agreement with President Bush. An identical percentage of opponents of a timetable (54%) want Bush to hold to his threat to veto legislation ***
***For the first time, a majority (51%) of Americans say they believe the U.S. will definitely or probably fail in establishing a stable democratic government in Iraq.
As was the case in March, only about a quarter (24%) say the troop increase is making things better in Iraq; just 34% believe it will improve things in the long run.***
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of American voters now favor either an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq (37%) or a firm deadline for their withdrawal (20%). The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 35% of voters are opposed to both of these options for ending the war. ***The number of Americans favoring immediate withdrawal has increased nine percentage points since November.
And the surge? "Just 29% of American voters believe the troop surge launched earlier this year has made things better in Iraq. Twice as many, 61%, believe the surge has either made things worse (43%) or had no impact (18%)."