Archive for the 'escalation' Category

Another chlorine gas dirty bomb was detonated in Baghdad on Wednesday, unfortunately confirming suspicions raised on Tuesday that the chlorine gas attacks are becoming a new part of the insurgents' arsenal. In Wednesday's attack, insurgents blew up a pickup carrying chlorine tanks.

Iraqi and American officials said the use of chlorine seemed aimed at bringing a new level of fear and havoc to Iraq as a new security plan for Baghdad takes shape.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an American military spokesman, said the attacks highlighted the fluidity of insurgent tactics in Iraq, dominated by militant groups that often notice and repeat attacks that attract the most attention and cause the most suffering.

Insurgents have shifted tactics to focus on helicopters, and on Wednesday one group forced down an American Black Hawk helicopter, the eighth such incident since Jan. 20. Roadside bombs have been adapted to punch through heavily armored Humvees. Attacks on Americans also now include coordinated assaults from multiple locations, with a mix of weapons and in at least one case, counterfeit American uniforms and vehicles.

"The enemy is adaptive," Colonel Garver said. "The enemy wants to win...."

The American military also said a soldier had been killed by gunfire in a northern neighborhood of Baghdad and a marine had died from combat in Anbar Province, where American troops were battling Sunni insurgents. Both died Tuesday.

Meanwhile, despite the increased military effort, 20 bodies were found Wednesday in the capital, an Interior Ministry official said. In addition to the chlorine attack, four bombs ripped through areas of the city, killing at least six people, while mortar shells rained down on a Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad, leaving three people dead.

While it's hard to imagine the chaos in Iraq could get any worse, it is getting worse and that trend will only continue. The "new security plan," Bush's escalation, has only served to displace the violence temporarily. The debacle is only going to worsen in the coming weeks and months, and the escalation will accomplish nothing more than endangering even more American men and women's lives. How many more will have to be sacrificed before our representatives find a way to end it?

Following yesterday's coordinated attack on a U.S. combat outpost, killing two American soldiers and wounding at least 17, the the attacks go on:

Violence continued in Baghdad today, as a bomb in a truck carrying chlorine gas killed at least five people and injured many more, including many women and children poisoned by the gas, police said.

A car bomb near a food market in southeast Baghdad killed 5 and wounded 20. And another car bomb in southeast Baghdad killed 3 and wounded 14, near a gas station hit by a car bomb two weeks ago.

Insurgents have been able to shoot down more helicopters through coordinated assaults, captured documents suggest, and American and Iraqi military officials say they are concerned that militants are moving to areas where the American troop presence remains thin.

The insurgents didn't take long to figure out how to respond to Bush's surge plan, and are doing so with what appears to be increasingly sophisticated planning. Including using chlorine trucks as dirty bombs.

A source at police headquarters said the chlorine truck was rigged with explosives, suggesting it was a dirty bomb employing a readily available substance used to purify water. A second police source also said the bomb was on the truck.

It hasn't yet appeared in English language stories, but the Dutch press is reporting on what might be a trend:

Security forces have obtained information that there are four similar trucks/tankers in the area around Ramadi.  They are reported to be hijacked by foreign suicide bombers [terrorists]. (Translation by our correspondent from The Netherlands, Plutonium Page.)

The attacks are getting more sophisticated, from bringing down helicopters and lying in wait to ambush the rescuers, to attacking military outposts, to using readily available materials as chemical warfare. It appears that there's an increasing resolve among the insurgents to inflict as much damage on the U.S. troops as on fellow Iraqis. This escalation can do nothing to quell that trend and can only serve to exacerbate it. We must get our troops out of Iraq.

Condi is making a surprise trip to Baghdad to tout the effectiveness of a troop build-up in the city:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced visit to Baghdad Saturday and hailed early signs of success in a U.S.-Iraqi operation to quell sectarian violence in the embattled capital. But she cautioned that longer-term prospects would depend on how the Iraqi government uses its "breathing space" to promote political reconciliation and economic progress....

She also said the operation was bringing "a new hope and a new optimism" to Baghdad, and she expressed satisfaction with the level of participation by Iraqi army units. Pentagon officials previously had said the Iraqi units being deployed for the crackdown were at 45 percent to 55 percent of their troop strength, which they said was not sufficient. But Rice said Saturday that commanders informed her the troop strength now was as high as 90 percent.

Meanwhile:

Although killings have decreased since the start of the operation in Baghdad three days ago, a double car bombing in the northern city of Kirkuk killed at least 10 people and wounded 60 Saturday in a crowded market. Police reported that a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vehicle moments after a booby-trapped car exploded in a predominantly Kurdish area of the ethnically mixed city....

Her visit came amid a relative lull in violence, which the Iraqi government held up as a promising sign that the new Baghdad security plan is off to a good start. A top U.S. military official sounded a more cautionary note, saying the capital might be experiencing a temporary respite as militant organizations assess the new measures and gear up to fight back.

The game of whack-a-mole continues, and as they move troops into one area, violence erupts in another. There aren't enough troops to quell it over the entire country. There will never be enough troops to quell the violence in the entire country, absent a draft in this country or an international miracle that would bring a huge influx of foreign troops. Sending a relative handful of new troops into this quagmire only puts more American lives in danger.

There isn't any good solution for Iraq. There's only the hope that we can get our men and women out as soon as possible and as safely as possible.

"A Divided House Denounces Plan for More Troops"

That would be the New York Times editorializing in its news story about yesterday's House vote on the Iraq escalation. It gets even more ridiculous in the lede:

A sharply divided House of Representatives passed a resolution on Friday formally repudiating President Bush’s decision to send more than 20,000 new combat troops to Iraq.

Never mind that there were 17 Republicans voting against their own President and with the Democrats. On any other vote that would have been called "bipartisan." On October 11, 2002, 296 Members voted to authorize the President to go to war with Iraq, while 133 voted against, a vote generally described at the time as an overwhelming victory for the President. Does the 50 vote difference between those two votes make this House "sharply divided?"

Democrats are going to have to understand that this is the way they are going to be covered as long as all of this non-binding back and forth plays out. Josh sees this theme:

If you get a chance on the second showing this evening, watch the second segment on CNN's AC360 this evening. It's about the surge vote. The primary theme? Democratic weakness.

Changing the narrative is going to require a strong position: getting us out of Iraq in a safe and orderly way, with troop protection being the number one concern. It's about getting them out. John Murtha is showing the way, and the sooner Democrats coalesce behind that effort, showing unity and a strong position to end the occupation, the sooner they can begin to challenge the media narrative.

Froomkin, WaPo:

It seems almost inconceivable: The White House actually invites the press corps to hold it accountable -- but when the time comes, and a key benchmark is missed, the press is silent.

And yet that's exactly what has happened.

Back in January, when President Bush announced that in spite of the public opinion against the war in Iraq he was going to send in more troops, he repeatedly insisted that what was different this time was that the Iraqis were finally serious about stepping up.

"You're going to have to -- you're going to have some opportunities to judge very quickly," one senior administration official said at an official background briefing on January 10, a few hours before Bush's prime-time announcement.

"The Iraqis are going to have three brigades within Baghdad within a little more than a month. They have committed to trying to get one brigade in, I think, by the first of February, and two more by the 15th," the official said.

"So people are going to be able to see pretty quickly that the Iraqis are or are not stepping up. And that provides the ability to judge."

But at a Pentagon press conference yesterday, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Peter Pace acknowledged that only two of those three Iraqi brigades are there: "You've got two of the Iraqi brigades in -- that were going to plussed up in Baghdad in Baghdad now. The third one is moving this month," Pace said.

Other press reports suggest that even those two brigades are not anywhere near full strength.

And action in Baghdad seems thus far to be almost entirely led by Americans, in stark contrast to what was promised.

Why do so many Americans, across the political spectrum, oppose this escalation?

Some oppose it because they opposed the war from the beginning. Others oppose it only now, because they know the "administration" is lying to them, and cannot be trusted to deliver anything, anywhere as promised, and they're damn well tired of it.

And yet...

Invite the press to follow you around, as Gary Hart famously did, to see if you're having an affair, and they'll pull an all-night stakeout to hold you accountable.

Invite the press to hold you accountable for your four-year-old abomination of a war and the possible deaths of hundreds if not thousands more American troops, then give them specific benchmarks with which to do it, and you get... crickets.

Sound familiar?

Clinton's zipper? "Yes, please!"

Domestic spying? Torture? Intentional destruction of America's intelligence community? "No thanks, moonbats."

Tell us again why Serious and Important People trust your product, and aren't defecting in record numbers to online sources?

The House passed the anti-escalation, non-binding resolution, House Concurrent Resolution 63, by a vote of 246-182.

Here's the text of the resolution:

Disapproving of the decision of the President announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That--

           (1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and

           (2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

On to the Senate for tomorrow's vote. Four GOP Senators (Senators Smith, Warner, Snowe, and Collins) have said they will back the resolution. McCain will apparently not be voting, Lieberman is unlikely to, as he doesn't work on Saturdays. And of course, we have Lindsey Graham:

"I will do everything in my power to ensure the House resolution dies an inglorious death in the Senate," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Why? Because Republicans admit, "If we debate the surge, we lose."

Why? Because America opposes the escalation.