Iraqi Attacks Imperil U.S. Rule
A fatal ambush occurs hours after more forces arrive in Fallouja, a hot spot. Nationally, assaults on American troops tripled last month.

In another sign of rising armed resistance to the U.S.-led occupation, one American soldier was killed and five others wounded early Thursday in an ambush just hours after the U.S. Army sent reinforcements here.

Though occupation authorities say they do not believe attacks are being organized on a national level, they acknowledge that strikes against U.S.-led forces have almost tripled — from 30 in April to 85 in May — and are planned, in most cases, they say, by remnants of Saddam Hussein's government.

This tense and increasingly volatile situation in central Iraq — with Fallouja as the primary hot spot — reflects a troublesome trend that threatens to undermine the U.S. occupation: Each time there is an attack on troops, the military steps up the kind of activities that many Iraqis say inspire them to resist. And each time the Iraqis resist, U.S. forces step up their enforcement efforts.
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It's beginning to sound like the West Bank.

Iraq Sunni cleric calls for jihad

This is not getting any better by the day, is it?

Where are all the neo-cons and their online friends talking about our great victory in Iraq. How we got rid of Saddam. Well, the word I would use is evicted. We threw him out of his palaces. The odds are good that we have done little else to him.

The article suggest the greatest threat is from the Sunnis angered at their loss of status. Sure, until the Shia clerics realize that if a war starts, they better get their share of dead Americans as well. The fact is that this situation is spinning out of control slowly. And the US has the wrong forces deployed in the wrong way to deal with a guerrilla war.

The fact is that the US has no natural allies in Iraq. Even Chalabi expects more of a role in running Iraq. This is fast becoming untenable. If a war starts, we have whole units isolated and deployed as little more than cops across the country.

We are facing a total collapse of our Iraq policy not within years or months, but weeks. If the pace of combat increases and we have to hunt down guerrillas through every village, and deal with platoon and company-sized ambushes, we will be fighting to hang on.
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No end in sight

The Army now has 128,000 troops in Iraq, along with 15,000 British troops and a U.S. Marine contingent that is drawing down to about 7,000. An additional 45,000 Army troops are in Kuwait providing support. The Army contribution adds up to the equivalent of just over five divisions out of a total active-duty strength of 10 divisions.

"This is a problem," the senior Pentagon official said, then quickly amended the comment, adding: "It is only a problem depending upon how quickly or how long it takes to get the coalition to come in to relieve this pressure."

I wouldn't hold my breath.

The "coalition" is not going to send troops into a civil war. Which is what is going to happen well before September. The mystery troops now shooting Americans are only going to grow in numbers, not shrink. Iraqis would be loath to accept any occupation, but one which leaves them in danger and victim of searches even Saddam didn't do, is one which cannot stand for long.
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US troops may well be stuck, not in an occupation, but a full-blown Congo-like civil war within weeks. Who is going to help us out of that mess? The coalition of the billing? Spanish and Italian troops?
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Downsizing in Disguise
by Naomi Klein

The streets of Baghdad are a swamp of crime and uncollected garbage. Battered local businesses are going bankrupt, unable to compete with cheap imports. Unemployment is soaring and thousands of laid-off state workers are protesting in the streets.

In other words, Iraq looks like every other country that has undergone rapid-fire "structural adjustments" prescribed by Washington, from Russia's infamous "shock therapy" in the early 1990s to Argentina's disastrous "surgery without anesthetic." Except that Iraq's "reconstruction" makes those wrenching reforms look like spa treatments.
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