It Wasn’t Supposed to Be Like This

"Quit beating around the bush," snaps the Wall Street Journal: "America faces a guerrilla war." And so it does. But an odd paralysis still grips the U.S. military command. While the number of American soldiers killed or wounded in ambushes increases by the day, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and proconsul Paul Bremer continue to speak of "remnants" and "bitter-enders" who can't get with the program, even as word spreads through the ranks that there is a well-organized resistance campaign underway in Iraq.

When Saddam Hussein spoke in March of letting Americans into Iraqi cities, especially Baghdad, and breaking their will, he meant it. After all, his government had been training civilians in combat techniques and distributing firearms, including AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, for a year before the invasion; and U.S. planners knew it. But the Pentagon, trapped in a different scenario – where urban guerrilla warfare was to commence (if at all) immediately after U.S. tanks entered the capital – didn't get the message. When heavy combat operations were followed by a pronounced lull, U.S. commanders seemed to forget Saddam's warning. Now, 1st Sgt. William Taylor, based near Tikrit, cites the lull as the period when the insurgents "got their cells together."
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Return of 10,000 U.S. Soldiers Delayed

In a major reversal forced by the growing insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq, the Pentagon announced today that more than 10,000 soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division will not be coming home by the end of September.
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India Refuses U.S. Request for Troops

After weeks of high-level discussions with the United States, India today rejected an American request to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq, saying it would only consider doing so under an "explicit" U.N. mandate.
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Lack of planning contributed to chaos in Iraq

The small circle of senior civilians in the Defense Department who dominated planning for postwar Iraq failed to prepare for the setbacks that have erupted over the past two months.

The officials didn't develop any real postwar plans because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the country's leader. The Pentagon civilians ignored CIA and State Department experts who disputed them, resisted White House pressure to back off from their favored exile leader and when their scenario collapsed amid increasing violence and disorder, they had no backup plan.

Today, American forces face instability in Iraq, where they are losing soldiers almost daily to escalating guerrilla attacks, the cost of occupation is exploding to almost $4 billion a month and withdrawal appears untold years away.

"There was no real planning for postwar Iraq," said a former senior U.S. official who left government recently.
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  thanks to CalPundit

Conflict on Iraq-Syria Border Feeds Rage Against the U.S.

On this desolate stretch of desert along the Iraqi frontier, tensions with the American soldiers just across the border are running so high, Syrian soldiers say, that four villagers have been shot by American soldiers in the past month.

Soldiers on the Syrian side of the border said American soldiers shot dead two cousins, one Iraqi and one Syrian, as they crossed into Iraqi territory about three weeks ago. Since then, they said, two other Syrian civilians have been wounded in separate incidents this month. The Syrians said that American helicopters and planes routinely violate Syrian airspace while patrolling.

The events described at this Syrian border post are the latest in a series of incidents along the frontier. They include the American attack, on June 18, on a convoy suspected of ferrying loyalists of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader.

That incident, along a smugglers' route about 30 miles from here, and the others have apparently fueled intense anti-American rage in the villages on the border. Among the signs of that anger is a series of video discs circulating through the villages exhorting viewers to attack the Americans in Iraq.
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The incompetence and delusions that make up the running of the war in Iraq would be funny, in a Three Stooges sort of way, if people weren't dying every day. How many more have to die before the American public wakes up? I don't ever expect our fearful leaders to change. The American public is going to have to change and throw the bastards out. They'd better not wait until the Presidential elections because there may not be anything left.