You've got to love
military propaganda:
In a show of force backed by tanks and mortars, U.S. forces assaulted dozens of suspected guerrilla positions in Saddam Hussein's hometown before dawn Monday, killing six alleged insurgents and capturing others, officials said.
U.S. forces fired a satellite-guided missile carrying a 500-pound warhead at a suspected insurgent sanctuary 10 miles south of Tikrit -- the second use in as many days of the powerful weapon amid a U.S. drive to intimidate the resistance.
Let's get a couple things straight. The resistance can't be intimidated. "Shock and Awe" didn't intimidate Iraqis into laying down arms, dropping a 500-pound bomb here or there isn't going to do the trick. Blowing up the odd empty building -- not that impressive either. Killing six insurgents? That's ok, but they got about 20 of ours this past weekend, and there are a lot more of them than of us. If I was the resistance I'd be pleased with those numbers.
On top of that, the administration talks about "outlasting" the guerillas, of winning the "battle of wills". We can't do either. Instead, we have essentially adopted the hated plan from the hated French to hand over power to the Iraqis sooner rather than later. What a hoot! The warblogger and PNAC crowd must be dancing in the streets!
In other words, the French were right. (But we already knew that.)
But Bush has vowed US troops will remain in place, so casualty numbers will continue to rise. And what happens when our puppet regime, desperate to stay in power and achieve some measure of legitimacy, orders the US troops out of Iraq? What happens when its members start getting assassinated?
Hmmm, something tells me Bush's reactive decision to adopt the French Plan has been as hasty and ill-thought out as the decision to start this useless, unecessary, and quagmire of a war.
Update: The Iraqi resistance has been intimidated into killing two more US Soldiers.