John Cole at Balloon-Juice has a good summary of all of the open source, non-partisan reporting on the strategic progress of the Iraq surge or at least the lack there-of.
A quick summary of the facts tells us that the Iraqi military is broken, the police force is even worse, we have ceded the south to the Shi’ites, Anbar province is under the control of the Ba’athists, our military is stretched to the breaking point, corruption is the norm, there is a cholera epidemic, high levels of violence against the civilian population, we can not provide basic services (like, for example, electricity or water), and the national government is squabbling (when not on vacation) and led incompetently by a man Bush thinks is under his tutelage (that alone should scare the hell out of you).
The sole force doing well in Iraq are the American contractors.
Personally, I blame the liberal media, and clearly it is time to bomb Iran.
It is from this current status that 'victory' or accomplishment of maximalist American governmental objections, or the continued hostage crisis being perpetuated by a combination of a feckled national Democratic Party and the Freeper wing of the Republican base will be derived from. And now we have an estimate in
Fred Kaplan's column (via
Kevin Drum )
Biddle also said (again, expressing his personal view) that the strategy in Iraq would require the presence of roughly 100,000 American troops for 20 years — and that, even so, it would be a "long-shot gamble."
Perpetual war through inertia strikes again
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