Update [2007-5-24 10:38:48 by Steven D]: Never mind. Joe Klein has the story, based on reliable sources (one of them a senior military official!) that things are going just swell in Iraq, and that “effective attacks” have dropped on some days to zero. So everything else you read hereafter just doesn’t matter. Because if Joe Klein says it’s so, well, who am I to argue with him (and his myriad anonymous sources)?
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Nine more US soldiers dead, 100 or more Iraqis dead on Wednessday, as the surge moves onward toward June.
Nine U.S. soldiers and Marines were killed in Iraq on Tuesday, and the military was investigating whether the body of a man found in the Euphrates River early yesterday was that of an American soldier abducted during a deadly ambush south of Baghdad almost two weeks ago, U.S. officials said.
Also yesterday, about 100 Iraqis were killed and 130 injured in mortar attacks, suicide attacks, car bombings, drive-by shootings and other violence nationwide, according to law-enforcement authorities and news-agency accounts.
The military on pace for another 100+ American deaths this month (not counting contractors). We have no idea how many Iraqis are being killed because the Iraq government made an executive decision not to report on those anymore. Not that the dead are concerned if they are counted or not. It’s only the living who pay attention to such matters and mourn their passing. Or not, as the Bush administration has proven.
(cont.)
Meanwhile rice farmers in southern Iraq know a good cash crop when they see one:
Farmers in southern Iraq have started for the first time to grow opium poppies in their fields, sparking fears that Iraq might become a serious drugs producer along the lines of Afghanistan.
Rice farmers in the fertile plain along the Euphrates, just to the west of Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad, have stopped cultivating rice and are instead planting poppies, Iraqi sources familiar with the area say.
Well, maybe poppies won’t grow well in old rice paddies. Let’s hope so.
Meanwhile, Our Dear Leader keeps reminding us that Iraq is still the central front in the War on Terror.
President Bush portrayed the Iraq war as a battle between the United States and al-Qaida yesterday and shared nuggets of intelligence to contend that Osama bin Laden was setting up a terrorist cell in Iraq to strike targets in the U.S. […]
“In the minds of al-Qaida leaders, 9/11 was just a down payment on violence yet to come,” Bush said in a commencement speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in which he defended his decision to order a troop buildup in Iraq. “It is tempting to believe that the calm here at home after 9/11 means that the danger to our country has passed.” […]
“Victory in Iraq is important for Osama bin Laden, and victory in Iraq is vital for the United States of America,” Bush told the graduating class.
Something tells me the minds of Al Qaeda leaders are quite satisfied with Bush’ viewpoint about the preeminence of Iraq’s role in The Long War, especially since it has now turned into a “cash cow” for their organization.
WASHINGTON — A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaeda operatives and money into Pakistan’s tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation.
In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda’s command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network’s operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.
And the Democratic Leadership just agreed to keep funding a war that is making us weaker while it helps Al Qaeda grows stronger. Yes, it’s true folks. We have all been transported to an alternate universe where up is down, down is sideways, right is top, left is bottom (and likely to stay there) and a President’s popularity is inversely proportional to his power. Hmmm, I wonder what our Most Holy Wise Man of the Beltway has to say about all this?
History will record that [Blair and Bush] saw the threat to the West posed by terrorism and responded courageously. The wisdom of their policy and the conduct of their governments are not likely to be judged as highly.
Yes, that’s right. David Broder thinks George Bush is a profile in courage. Incompetent courage, perhaps, but courage nonetheless. And you wonder why we are still in Iraq?