Thursday, May 12, 2005
Whack: Civil war
No, not the Red States and the Blue States all over again, silly! In Iraq!
As always, the numbers tell the story:
Not a lot of good options, here. Sure, we had the Marines level Fallujah, but that didn't do a lot of good. Now the insurgents are going after Baghdad. We're going to level Baghdad?
Helicopters off the roofs in the Green Zone, anyone?
As always, the numbers tell the story:
Insurgents are staging about 75 attacks a day, up from 30 to 40 daily six weeks ago, according to the U.S. military. Increasingly, the rebels appear to be employing car bombs. In April, the military recorded 135 car bombs, almost doubling the number in March, said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a military spokesman here said.
This month — when as many as a dozen car bombs have exploded in a single day — may set a bleak new record. U.S. authorities concede that they have yet to find a way to control the insurgents' most effective weapon. "There's no foolproof method against it," Boylan said.
The offensive appears to coincide with the seating of a U.S.-backed government three months after a parliamentary election in January.
Military officials said the surge in violence more than two years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein was probably the result of weeks of planning and marshaling of resources, especially suicide bombers and bomb-laden vehicles.
In a separate offensive by the U.S. military, Marines have captured or killed scores of guerrillas in an offensive underway in western Iraq aimed at foreign fighters allegedly infiltrating the country from neighboring Syria.
U.S. officials believe that the bulk of the guerrilla force is made up of disenchanted Sunni Arab Iraqis, including many who lost their livelihoods after the fall of Hussein, and that no more than 10% of the guerrilla force is composed of foreigners.
That would be no more than 2,000 of the 20,000 hard-core fighters said to be operating in Iraq, according to estimates from government and private experts. More than 10,000 guerrilla suspects are also in U.S. custody in Iraq.
(via LA Times)
Not a lot of good options, here. Sure, we had the Marines level Fallujah, but that didn't do a lot of good. Now the insurgents are going after Baghdad. We're going to level Baghdad?
Helicopters off the roofs in the Green Zone, anyone?
