Richard Armitage is no Richard Holbrooke, but compared to Wolfie, Feith and the boys he's always seemed to have at least a passing familiarity with the real world. But as the Neocons' dreams for Iraq slip away, so apparently does their
grasp of reality:
A senior U.S. official insisted on Saturday that the U.S. military has the upper hand in the escalating war in Iraq, on a day when two paratroopers died in a roadside ambush and the international Red Cross said it was closing two main offices due to deteriorating security.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage described Iraq as a "war zone," but noted that "we have the momentum in this process."
"I'm absolutely convinced we have a very solid plan to go out and get these people who are killing us and killing Iraqis," he told reporters during a visit to Iraq.
The sharp rise in the number of attacks against the troops of the U.S.-led coalition and their allies in the Iraqi security services, and the guerrillas' apparent ability to strike at will, has prompted fears that the initiative in the conflict is slipping from the coalition's hands...
Two soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division died Saturday when a homemade bomb exploded beside their vehicle about in Fallujah, a center of Sunni Muslim resistance 40 miles west of Baghdad, the military said.
Their deaths brought to 34 the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq this month...
Yeah, we have momentum all right--the same momentum we had in Vietnam from December 1964 through May 1965.
It's only the eighth day of the November, and already 34 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq this month. Last month 42 died in Iraq. (With the counting shenanigans continually employed by the DoD, it's possible these numbers may be higher.) If we have far more luck than we have any reason to expect and suffer no more combat deaths in November, the monthly average for October and November would be 38 fatalities. It wasn't until February 1965 that American troops had a deadlier month in Vietnam. Heaven forbid we suffer casualties for the rest of the month at the same rate as the first eight days, but if we do that would be 127 casualties. We didn't have a deadlier month in Vietnam until June 1965.
Armitage is right, we have momentum...and if we don't halt this momentum, pretty soon Pete Seeger will be singing "Waist Deep in the Big Sandy."