The big news today is that 5 US soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack with 2 more killed in separate incidents. That brings the total number of US soldiers killed this month to 36, which is sharply higher than last month (23) and just shy of the casualty count for October and November with 5 days left in the month.
So to all those folks who say Iraq is going smoothly, I present you some inconvenient facts.
The even more stunning development to me is covered in this NYT article (link below) which states that at least 100 mostly Sunni militiamen who had cooperated or collaborated with the US military have been killed in the past month....that's right IN JUST ONE MONTH!
[more below the fold]
http://icasualties.org/...
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I find this stunning because these people are members of what the US calls the "Awakening Council" (an evangelical influenced term if I've ever heard one). These are members of private armies which total around 80,000 (which roughly breaks down as 80% Sunni/20% Shiite) yet they are being targeted and killed in high numbers. The article strongly suggests that if this level of violence continues, the Awakening movement could collapse with many of the constituent elements breaking apart and rejoining the anti-US insurgency or Shiite militias.
Those responsible for the killings include Sunni fundamentalists (what is often referred to as Al-Qaeda in Iraq), Shiite militiamen from the Badr group and members of Moqtada Al-Sadr's Shiite Mahdi Army. The inability of the Iraqi government to provide adequate support to Awakening members staffing security checkpoints is cited as one area of frustration. Even more important, it appears that both Sunnis and Shiite groups outside the Awakening Movement are targeting these members. There is a big risk that this could escalate on two-fronts, a Sunni-Shite conflict along with an intra-Sunni conflict.
All of this is to say that while the DC media and the GOP are claiming that things have settled down in Iraq, there has been a lot of movement on the ground, a shifting of alliances, and over the past month, intensified sectarian and intra-sectarian conflict that appears to have also had the effect of increasing attacks against US soldiers, with a resulting increase in US casualties.
The Iraqi government is unable to curtail this violence and the US military is being drawn into the conflict. It is difficult to see where there is a military solution to this problem when there is no effective functioning central government in Baghdad. Given that Bush plans no change in policy, we are going to live with violence in Iraq throughout the entirety of 2008. Even though the economy currently ranks as the top issue in the campaign, Iraq will be the key issue for the general election, and I think Media coverage and netroots coverage ought to focus more on the key issues going forward.