"The surge is working"...yeah...right

[SHRED]

Monday, April 07, 2008
5 US Troops Die in Iraq;
Heavy Fighting in Sadr City Kills 22, Wounds 78;
Blockade Threatens Humanitarian Crisis

The US military attacked the Mahdi Army militia in Sadr City on Sunday, alongside Iraqi Army troops. The fighting left 22 dead and 78 wounded, at least. It was not clear what the purpose of the attack was, since the US clearly cannot intensively occupy the labyrinthine Shiite slum and therefore cannot actually disarm the Mahdi Army. Were they attempting to impress on the Sadrists that rocket attacks on the Green Zone (see below) would bring retaliation?

~SNIP~

Neither the US nor Britain any longer has good intelligence on what is happening in the slums of Basra. If Petraeus is getting his information from al-Maliki on all this, he should be careful. The Da'wa and ISCI are perfectly capable of doing propaganda to embroil the US in their fights. In fact, their lies helped draw the US in, in the first place.

The US Institute of Peace concluded in a just-released report that there has been little political progress in Iraq, and that the US risks, as a result, being bogged down there for 5 to 10 years. If critics of the US presence are correct, Having so many US troops in Iraq may actually be delaying the compromises that Iraqis desperately need to make with one another. As it is, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki knows that he can just have the US Air Force bomb his enemies; he doesn't need to come to an agreement with them.

http://www.juancole.com/2008/04/5-us-troops-die-in-iraq-heavy-fighting.html


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