UPI: Insurgency growing again in Iraq

[Barrett808]

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- It was another grim and sobering week in the Iraq conflict. For the Sept. 14 bombing blitz we monitored in last week's Iraq Benchmarks column proved to be only the beginning of one of the bloodiest bombing offensives against Shiite civilians in Baghdad yet seen. More than 600 people in all were killed in such attacks on the days that followed.

U.S. leaders have claimed that the metrics of casualties being inflicted on the insurgents in Iraq prove that the war was going better for the United States and its Iraqi allies. But unfortunately there are solid grounds to dispute that assertion.

First, on Friday the Department of Defense announced that 9,400 active-duty U.S. troops in Iraq who were scheduled to finish one-year tours in January will be kept there an extra seven to 10 days. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq currently remains high, around 147,000. Keeping and boosting troop numbers does not indicate a security strategy that is going well at a time when the number of attacks on U.S. and allied forces are remorselessly increasing.

Second, as we have noted before in these Iraq Benchmarks columns, kill figures for insurgents and figures of those arrested are usually in any war and military operation vastly inflated by both genuine confusion and wishful thinking. And the more solid reason for skepticism, unfortunately, is that the metrics, or numbers of measurement, on casualties suffered by U.S. and allied Iraqi military forces has been going up remorselessly all around Iraq again.

Worse yet, this has been happening right after the counter-insurgency offensive by U.S. and allied forces in Tel Afar and while the insurgents were carrying out a bombing blitz of almost unprecedented intensity in the capital Baghdad itself.

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