Despite the infusion of American and Iraqi troops to Baghdad this year, suicide bombings, a hallmark of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, have been rising. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top spokesman for the United States military here, said last week that the number of car bombs in Baghdad reached a record high of 44 in February, of 77 nationwide.
47 Are Killed in Iraq Bombings, 20 in Baghdad - New York Times
It comes as no surprise that the pResident's latest attempt to snatch failure from the jaws of debacle in Iraq has shown no sign of success. If anything, the chaos and loss of life is getting worse in direct defiance of Bush's escalation surge, as the insurgents know that the sooner it becomes apparent to the world at large that things are not getting better, the sooner the American public will ratchet up the pressure to withdraw all of the troops. It's been obvious for some time that it would require five to ten times the number of additional troops (and we're talking trained and ready troops, not rushed-into-battle rookies who know nothing at all about Iraq or counter-insurgency tactics or even standard armed services discipline) to make a difference in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq.
Meanwhile, reports are out indicating that the reason Britain is pulling out its troops in the south of Iraq while sending more troops to Afghanistan is because the Taliban are taking over there, with the growing approval of the local residents, and not, as Darth Cheney has tried to suggest, because of great strides in progress (unless he was talking about the progress made by the Taliban, and not the coalition forces).
technorati tags:Iraq, Afghanistan, surge, failure
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