U.S. Finds War in Iraq Is Far From Finished
Guerrilla-style attacks are growing. A military official vows to stay the course in quelling resistance and rebuilding the nation.

Facing a marked increase in the frequency and brazenness of attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq in the last two weeks, military officials are for the first time speaking more openly about the potential for a long-term fight to quell the resistance to the American presence.

Although the term is rarely used at the Pentagon, from every description by military officials, what U.S. troops face on the ground in Iraq has all the markings of a guerrilla war — albeit one in which there are multiple opposition groups rather than a single movement.
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"The first clear message is: This war is not over. It's not ended," a senior military official in Iraq said Saturday. "All of us in uniform are targets, we're subject to being engaged."

The official said that the Americans would not give up until they had vanquished the resisters, but he added that the war would not be over until every Iraqi was working actively with the Americans to defeat what he called "the enemies of Iraq."
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Military experts inside and outside the Pentagon said they fear that the U.S. has failed to assert itself strongly enough on the ground in Iraq because of political pressure to send a message that American forces would leave the country as soon as possible. That may have emboldened the opposition to try to speed the U.S. military's departure, with each killing or act of sabotage helping recruit more foot soldiers for the resistance.

"Clearly, they are emboldened by success," said a senior military official in Washington. "You have to go in and tell them: 'We're gonna do what we did in Germany and Japan. We're gonna write your constitution. We're gonna install your government. We're gonna write your laws. We're gonna watch your every move for a decade, and then maybe you'll get a chance to do it yourself.' "
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This is just sheer delusional lunacy. They expect all Iraqis to fight "the enemies of Iraq"? And who are these enemies? They're Iraqis! Iraqis are the enemies of Iraq. And just what the hell is the occupying military force? I may be way off on this, but I would wager that most Iraqi's see the US as the enemy of Iraq.

The arrogance of the last paragraph is monumental. Again, I may be way off on this but, if I was an Iraqi confronted with this attitude my response would be simple: FUCK YOU! Which is exactly what the Iraqis seem to be doing. Except they are using the language of bullets and grenades. Can you say Viet Nam? Can you say body bags?

US begins Iraq crackdown as soldiers found dead

The US military launched a huge operation yesterday to crack down on insurgents in Iraq as the civilian administrator, Paul Bremer, promised that America would "impose" its will upon the country.

The show of force began as the bodies of two US soldiers, missing since Wednesday, were found near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad. They bring the death toll since the official end of major combat to 23 Americans and six Britons.

In a candid interview on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost, Mr Bremer said pockets of resistance in Iraq would be crushed. "We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or, if necessary, kill them until we have imposed law and order upon this country," he said.
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Can you say West Bank?

Time for baby steps

Occupation Forces Halt Elections Throughout Iraq

"In a postwar situation like this, if you start holding elections, the people who are rejectionists tend to win," Bremer said. "It's often the best-organized who win, and the best-organized right now are the former Baathists and to some extent the Islamists." Bremer was referring to members of Hussein's Baath Party and religiously oriented political leaders.

Bremer and other U.S. officials are fearful that Islamic leaders such as Moqtada Sadr, a young Shiite Muslim cleric popular on the streets of Baghdad, and Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, leader of the Iranian-supported Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, would be best positioned to field winning candidates

So, no elections until you get the right puppet government. Instead, we appoint Iraqi generals and colonels to run these cities.

How long will it take until the Shia clerics pick up their weapons and give the order for an uprising?
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Hot enough for you?

Years ago I was on a painting crew that got a home weatherization project from the City of Des Moines. One of the routine jobs involved putting tar paper around the severely cracked foundation of an older home. It was 108° F. that day, and the normally rigid tar paper was flopping around like a sheet of paper. We took hourly breaks and were drinking quarts of pop like they were half full Dixie cups. 108° is damn hot. It's 109° again today in Baghdad, so I went looking for some news about Iraqi summer heat.

Even when there's air conditioning, the effect is relative. When it's 130 degrees F. outside, a room can be cooled to about 90 degrees at best. But air conditioning requires electricity. Journalists, royalty, and other "elites" get most of their power from local generators, but even those can be unreliable. "In the middle of our interview, the power kicked out and the room went pitch black. Within 30 seconds, the temperature in the room seemed to jump 30 degrees in the absence of air conditioning.
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  thanks to Counterspin Central

Things are getting worse

To say that the resistance is only being done by irridentist baathists is silly. In Najaf? Amara? In a Shia neighbohood in Baghdad?

Saddam didn't have that many fans, but Americans may have that many enemies.

The US wants to use arrests and raids when the enemy is playing for keeps. The White House acts as if those actions don't breed more enemies. Iranians and Syrians clearly want the US to fail, but our actions, our indifference is making this situation spiral out of control. Iraqis are telling us, turn on the water, stop the sweeps and the US ignored them as if they are children. They pretend things are improving. 60 dead in two months. Even the media is saying this war is not over. And for once, they're right.
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Death on the road to Basra

I still do not know why it caught my eye, why I looked ahead when I did - but I glimpsed a dark shape lying in the middle of the road.

The driver swerved to avoid it, braking sharply. As we passed I looked through window and caught sight of a body. Not the body of an animal, but the body of a child.

I asked the driver to stop, and we drove back. It was indeed the body of a young boy, his blood-soaked clothes scattered across the road. A few metres away, a girl is crying, screaming. She is inconsolable.

We see an American soldier and ask him to call for help. Ten minutes later, officers from the US Military Police turn up. In the blazing sun, a crowd is now gathering.

The girl is still crying - her name is Sabrina, she is 13 years old. She is barefoot and wears a ragged dress. She has dark eyes and long, brown hair.

She tells me how she saw her 11-year-old brother, Muhannad, had run up to an American military convoy trying to sell something to the soldiers, but was run over as he crossed the road.

The Americans did not stop.
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Palm Bay man has eye for detail

On May 25, while scanning the Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program images pipelined into his desktop from 450 miles in orbit, Hank Brandli skidded at a nighttime photo of Iraq. It looked familiar. But not exactly.

Brandli retrieved another DMSP image he'd archived from May 3. He compared the two. The most recent photo showed a blazing corridor of light running the length of Kuwait, south to north, all the way to the Iraqi border. The image wasn't there on May 3.

"It's going right up to Iraq's oil fields," says the retired Air Force colonel from his home in Palm Bay. "Maybe I'm full of s---. Maybe all they're doing is building a highway to put in McDonald's and sell hamburgers. But why go that way? I think we're in bed with Kuwait. I think we're pumping oil out of Iraq to pay for this war."
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  thanks to Bush Wars