The writing on the wall is now being done with a very large brush. A sampling form this morning's media online.
Two die as US Abrams tank blown up
Two United States soldiers were killed when their Abrams battle tank was attacked, and seven Ukrainian troops were wounded in the first ambush of a multinational unit in the Polish sector south of Baghdad, coalition officials said yesterday.
The tank was disabled when it was struck by a land mine or roadside bomb during a patrol near Balad, 70 kilometres north of Baghdad on Tuesday night.
This is the second story I've seen today on the Abrams, the other one is even more disturbing because there may be a new weapon out there as well.
What killed a U.S. tank?
On Aug. 28, 2003, an unknown munition, thought to be no wider than a pencil, pierced the side of an M1A1 Abrams tank on patrol in Baghdad. The round crippled the 69-ton vehicle and slightly injured its commander and gunner. It was the second Abrams knocked out of commission by the enemy in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now Army officials are trying to figure out what kind of mystery projectile could pierce the Abrams armor and disable it.
Not only are they getting desperate, they might also be running a weapons development programme. Check the slide show. After going through the armour, ripping through assorted bits of metal, plastic and flak jacket, it still had enough velocity to bury itself, pretty well intact, nearly 2 inches into the armour on the other side of the tank. It happened on August 28 and they still haven't figured out what it was. Now say after me, Oh Shit.
On with the show. from the SMH
Bush may have to cut and run
After yet another bloody day in Iraq, US President George Bush dropped his enthusiastic message that the latest wave of attacks was evidence of just how much "progress" was being made in bringing freedom to the country.
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In a hastily called news conference, Bush instead stressed that the US would not be defeated by terrorists.
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Perhaps not. But many in Washington are now asking the question that was left hanging before the war. When do the troops come home? Or, does Bush have an exit strategy?
The bombing of the International Red Cross, like the earlier bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, was designed to undermine international support for the US, to isolate it as the occupying force. The wave of bombings against police stations is aimed at disrupting US plans to hand over security to Iraqis.
The weekend attack on the Al Rasheed Hotel, the home of many occupation officials in the so-called secure Green Zone, also struck right at the heart of the occupation itself. That the US Deputy Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the Iraq policy, was in the hotel, was an added coup for the assailants.
"We are at war in Iraq", said Richard Holbrooke, president Bill Clinton's UN ambassador, voicing an opinion that is beginning to reverberate here. "You cannot do nation-building with a country at war."
The problem for Bush is that his Iraq strategy is based on trying to nation-build while fighting the growing insurgency.
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So, despite all the strong words about not running out of Iraq, some Democrats say they will not be surprised to see Bush declare next year that enough "progress" has been made to start pulling large numbers of US forces out, whatever the consequences.
Funny, you'd think Bush could at least read the pictures, even if he doesn't understand the words. Apparently others are starting to get it. Even the WAPO.
Pentagon Debating Pulling People Off Weapons Hunt
As violence has spiraled in Iraq, top U.S. officials have debated pulling intelligence officers off the so-far unsuccessful hunt for weapons of mass destruction and reassigning them to counterinsurgency efforts, officials said Wednesday.
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But Pentagon, CIA and other top officials have not been able to agree on whether to reassign some of the 1,400 people working on the weapons search, three officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday.
One intelligence official said they have been struggling for more than three weeks over the question of whether shifting intelligence personnel to the battle against insurgent forces would be harmful. Other possibilities include moving the needed intelligence officers, linguists and others from somewhere else, contracting outsiders [Someone, call Halliburton, there's another juicy contract to be had or options that the official declined to cite.
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Some officials have made the case that the No. 1 priority is to stop the attacks on coalition forces, Iraqis and international organizations. [No shit Sherlock
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American officials say they still don't know who is behind the car bombings that have been striking Baghdad for more than two months, despite the efforts of 130,000 U.S. troops, 22,000 other coalition troops, more than 80,000 Iraqi security forces and dozens of FBI agents. [But they KNEW IT ALL before the war from 7000 miles away, whassa matter?
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Also, a scathing internal report on the Army's information gathering in Iraq found ... the service's intelligence specialists in Iraq "did not appear to be prepared for tactical assignments" and often exhibited "weak intelligence briefing skills" and "very little to no analytical skills."
A particular problem, the team said, has been finding enough competent Arabic interpreters to help American forces. Many of the interpreters don't have much training for their jobs and only enough specialized knowledge "to tell the difference between a burro and a burrito," the Army report said.
But, no doubt they have the right politicasl connections in Washington, so that's alright then. But wait, there's more.
Cheney's hawks 'hijacking policy'
A former Pentagon officer turned whistleblower says a group of hawks in the Bush Administration, including the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, is running a shadow foreign policy, contravening Washington's official line.
"What these people are doing now makes Iran-Contra look like amateur hour. . . it's worse than Iran-Contra, worse than what happened in Vietnam," said Karen Kwiatkowski, a former air force lieutenant-colonel.
"[President] George Bush isn't in control . . . the country's been hijacked," she said, describing how "key [governmental] areas of neoconservative concern were politically staffed".
Ms Kwiatkowski, who retired this year after 20 years service, was a Middle East specialist in the office of the Undersecretary of Defence for Policy, headed by Douglas Feith.[ So plainly she is just speculating from way outside the loop, hardly better than a blogger really]
She described "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress", adding that "in order to take that first step - Iraq - lies had to be told to Congress to bring them on board".
Ms Kwiatkowski said the pursuit of national security decisions often bypassed "civil service and active-duty military professionals", and was handled instead by political appointees who shared common ideological ties.
So it looks like tinfoil hats are THE fashion accessory this year. Along with treason charges. And, despite all the tough talk, as with the UN...
Red Cross to cut Iraq staff
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said it will reduce its foreign staff in Iraq, after its headquarters in Baghdad was bombed on Monday.
The agency, which has about 30 international and 600 Iraqi staff in Iraq, stressed it was not pulling out of the country.
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The ICRC's decision to scale back came a day after medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said it would pull out four of its seven expatriate staff in Iraq following the Red Cross attack.
And just to wrap it up, again from the WAPO
Staying the Course, Without Choice [just the money quotes]
"The strategy remains the same," President Bush told reporters yesterday. What the president did not say is that this is really the only approach open to the U.S.-led coalition right now.
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The stance now, one top general said at the Pentagon yesterday, is "stay the course, faster."[At least the resistance is contributing to THAT objective in full
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Any of the administration's options for boosting troop numbers ... would likely damage morale and put a huge strain on a relatively small all-volunteer Army.
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"The administration is in a tight spot," observed one gloomy Pentagon consultant who has been involved in planning for Iraq. "It would be nice to have lots more manpower, properly trained, and for the U.S. elites and public to understand it will be a long slog where we take casualties. For that matter, it would also be nice to win the lottery. I wouldn't bank on either."
The other choice Bush could make would be to "cut and run" -- that is, more or less wash America's hands of Iraq, turn the problem over to the locals, and simply maintain a small garrison force near Baghdad to prop up whatever Iraqi government it leaves behind.
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"If we run from this, then the terrorists will have won, Iraq will be home to many nasty groups and a haven for anyone with a gun, and we will have left the Iraqis in much worse shape than they were under Saddam [Hussein]."
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"I believe we're looking at the beginning of a sustained insurgency. I don't think this is the mopping-up the administration cast it as a couple of months ago," said Steven Metz, a professor at the U.S. Army War College. He sees the potential for the violence to go "on and on and on, with a shooting here and a bombing there . . . somewhere between the Palestinian intifada and Northern Ireland." ... Yet Metz, an insurgency specialist, does not think the militants can stop the Bush administration from building an Iraqi government or restarting the economy. Nor, he said, does he think "they can kill enough Americans that it would lead to a collapse of the American will."
Keep whistling, its a very long graveyard.