Follow me if you will.
An American raid and airstrike killed 32 people in the Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr City today, in what American military officials described as the latest assault on a network linking Iraqi militants with money and deadly roadside bombs from Iran.But Shi'ite militias are the armed wings of the Shi'ite blocs in the Iraqi parliament. The Shi'ite blocs in the Iraqi parliament are the fickle power base of supposed American ally, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. And Nouri al-Maliki is "on a trip to Iran . . . for discussions about security." Interestingly:
Colonel Garver said military intelligence indicated that at least one of the initial targets of today’s raid — 12 of whom were detained — acted as a “proxy between” the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or Quds Force, and the Shiite Iraqi militias responsible for killing American troops with lethal roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s.There are many ways to read this, but all of them point to the underlying fact that the American military does not, in fact, know whom it is fighting or whom it just killed.
6 comments:
Mainly they are just counting (blown off) noses. Couple polls here and there show the public thinks things are improving in Iraq. I submit that is because lately we've been getting more body-count stories like this.
Not sure what happens here. We have a strategic opponent in Iraq, a tactical opponent in the Shi'ites and, oh yeah, an operational ally in Malaqi...as I recall my Military Art and Science 101 Cliffnotes, the strategy is supposed to dictate the operations which dictate the strategy. In this case, our strategy is rapidly approaching the British Parachute Regiments in Ulster, which was to shot back as hard as possible at whomever was shooting at them.
Here's a thought. Our next move will be to re-install the Baathists as the powerbrokers and rulers. Hell, Taziq a Zhid is still around somewhere, and he's a Christian. We could install a Christian Baathist as ruler of an overwhelmingly Muslim country where we just collaborated in overthrowing a Baathist regieme...
Was it Nixon who said that the way to get what you want in geopolitics was to act crazy? Bush is channelling him...
Smart bombs only and always kill insurgents; that's why they're known as smart bombs.
"I AM so Smart, S-M-R-T..."
--Homer Simpson, as house burns
For someplace that wasn't supposed to be anything like Vietnam, Iraq is starting to look oddly familiar.
Please (other) anonymous, Iraq is NOTHING like Vietnam. Vietnam was lush, green, thick with jungle and rivers. Iraq, on the other hand, is dusty, sandy, dry as a fossil, hotter than f*ck...where is the similarity?
HAH! Checkmate.
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