NIGHTMARE IN IRAQ….I’m pretty tired of blogging about the wretched situation in Iraq, but it’s hard not to. Here’s the latest, from a confidential report about insurgent attacks written by a private security firm for the government:
A sampling of daily reports produced [over the past two weeks] by Kroll Security International for the U.S. Agency for International Development shows that such attacks typically number about 70 each day. In contrast, 40 to 50 hostile incidents occurred daily during the weeks preceding the handover of political authority to an interim Iraqi government on June 28, according to military officials.
….In number and scope, the attacks compiled in the Kroll reports suggest a broad and intensifying campaign of insurgent violence that contrasts sharply with assessments by Bush administration officials and Iraq’s interim prime minister that the instability is contained to small pockets of the country.
This stuff just keeps coming and coming, and virtually no one except those paid to do so even disputes it anymore. Iraq is a nightmare.
And the worst part isn’t the question of whether elections can be held everywhere next January. Despite his usual belligerent phrasing, Donald Rumsfeld is basically right when he says that elections in 80% of the country are better than no elections at all. The worst part, assuming the elections go off in some semblence of order, is that there’s really no reason to think they will change anything. And when the elections have been held but the attacks continue to increase, what’s next? What’s the plan then?
