From the Sunday L.A. Times
BAGHDAD — Kareem Yousif knew it would be a rough day when armed men tried to abduct four of his employees as they rode to work in a company van. The Radio Dijla staff members escaped unharmed, but the maverick news-and-talk station did not.
Hours after Thursday's foiled abduction, editors, security guards and other radio staffers battled with dozens of gunmen who stormed the building, killing one guard and wounding two others. They drove off the assailants, but the next night, arsonists returned to finish the job.
By Saturday, the station was a smoldering, looted ruin, one more casualty in a war in which independent voices face deadly repercussions.
Yousif, the station's acting director, and Ahmed Rikabi, its founder, blamed groups linked to Al Qaeda for Thursday's attack, which occurred on World Press Freedom Day.
"We're a symbol of unity. What we were doing is absolutely against their thinking," Rikabi said.
Yes, a "symbol of unity" in which destruction is mutually assured.
Oh yes, and of course, about our troops. Also from the Sunday L.A. Times
Gen. Lynch: U.S. casulaties to increase
BAGHDAD -- A U.S. general commanding troops in Iraq warned today that American casualties will increase as a security plan aimed at quelling violence continues, a prediction that followed the deadliest month so far this year for U.S. forces.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, made his comments on the same day that the U.S. military announced the deaths of three more troops: two in Al Anbar province west of Baghdad and one in northern Iraq. The deaths brought to 3,368 the number of American troops killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003, according to the website www.icasualties.org.
Already this month, at least six U.S. troops have died. Last month brought 104 U.S. deaths. That was the highest monthly toll among Americans since December, when 112 died, and marked only the fourth time since the beginning of 2005 that more than 100 U.S. troops have died in a single month.
The trend will continue as forces dig in against insurgents under the security plan, which began Feb. 13, said Lynch. The general has lost 13 soldiers since taking command of a swath of territory south of Baghdad in March.
Next day, U.S. casualties increase
But the bloodshed gets much worst in one news cycle as the Washington Post reports for Monday:
BAGHDAD, May 6 -- Eight American soldiers were killed in roadside bomb attacks Sunday, one of the highest single-day death tolls this year. They were among 12 U.S. service members whose deaths were announced on a day when car bombs killed scores of Iraqis across the country, threatening to deepen sectarian tensions.
A senior U.S. commander said Sunday that the military was bracing for a rise in the casualty rate in the coming months, as an ongoing security offensive attempts to tame the devastating violence and stabilize Baghdad.
"All of us believe that in the next 90 days, you'll probably see an increase in American casualties because we are taking the fight to the enemy," Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Army's Task Force Marne, told reporters Sunday. "This is the only way we can win the fight."
Even as insurgents take aim at U.S. troops, they have stepped up their attacks on so-called soft targets, especially in Shiite areas of Baghdad, in an apparent attempt to stoke sectarian warfare. In the deadliest such attack Sunday, a car bomb explosion tore through one of the capital's biggest markets at midday, killing 42 people, police said. The blast, in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Bayaa, ravaged buildings, scorched vehicles and injured at least 67 people, police said.
General names real enemies
And who is killing our soldiers? It's Al-Qaida, right? As President Bush mentioned abut 50 times in his veto address? Well, he probably doesn't listen to his "generals on the ground," as he likes to say. This is what Gen. Lynch told the Washington Post:
Lynch said his forces were more frequently encountering powerful roadside bombs called "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs, which U.S. officials say are of Iranian origin and can punch through the armor of Humvees. Other roadside bombs are buried so deep in the ground that they are difficult to find even with high-tech devices, he said.
While U.S. military officials view EFPs as a weapon of Shiite extremists, Lynch said they were also turning up in the hands of Sunni insurgents.
"The enemy dominates the terrain," he said. "He has the opportunities to set ambushes. He has the opportunity to set traps."
"You got a thinking enemy out there," Lynch added. "As soon we do something to prove our capability, he does something to defeat our capability. It is a continual cycle. That's why I will never rest with our up-armored Humvees or our technology."
Shiites and Sunnis. Not Al-Qaida. And why is it Shiite extremists, but not insurgents. And why is it Sunni insurgents but not extremists? I guess you have to call them something. Whatever happened to rebels? Or evil-doers?
Back to the insurgent attack in Shiite neighborhood in Baya. While the Washington Post reported the statistics, please read the New York Times account. Some great reporting from the scene:
The bomb detonated at the junction of two major streets in Baya, a middle-class neighborhood. One of the streets had bus stops on either side of the road where minibuses drop off and collect people who work and shop in the market.
"There were a number of minibuses full of passengers and ready to leave, and they were set ablaze," said Qassim al-Khafaji, who was nearby. "The passengers burned inside the cars.
He added: "I even saw some pedestrians who caught fire. The wooden stands of food, clothes and handy tools were completely destroyed."
Yes "passengers burned inside the cars." What wonderful progress. More from the Times:
Another resident, Said Malik al-Magosi, said he lived around the corner from where the bomber detonated the explosives and rushed to help, but was forced back by the police and the army, who feared a second bomb. As he tried to get home, a sniper began shooting, Mr. Magosi said.
"After I got back, I gave myself one week to move from my house to another place in Baghdad because life here has become impossible," he said.
Yep, the surge is in it's 11th week. Lots of progress.
They blew up the building so it wouldn't explode
Also in the N.Y. Times in the same story is a great account of how U.S. troops found a house in Sadr City that contained a torture cell and 150 mortar rounds.
Now this paragraph appears, no B.S.
Subsequently the soldiers blew up the house because they were worried that the mortar shells and other munitions, which included detonator sets for improvised explosive devices, were unstable and might explode, harming people in the neighborhood.
Yup! They had to blow up the house because it might EXPLODE? That, of course, pissed off everyone in the neighborhood. Some progress.
Now, just cruising the major papers, without my own Intelligence Briefing, I found all this death and destruction. Every day, events mock the goals of the "surge."
My question is, why isn't this reporting contained in policy stories? It seems politics in the U.S. and life in the Iraqi streets are taking place in 2 different realities.
Shovel awaits surge
But there seems to be some light in the heads of the Bush Administration.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is standing by the "surge," but he is ready to bury it with a shovel.
Again, from the L.A. Times
WASHINGTON — President Bush has mobilized his administration, including his top general in Iraq, in a major push to win more time and money for his war strategy. But one crucial voice has been missing from the chorus: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates'.
In fact, Gates' recent comments seem to run counter to the message from the White House. During a recent trip to the Middle East, Gates told the Iraqi government that time was running out and praised Democratic efforts in the U.S. Congress to set a timetable for withdrawal, saying it would help prod the Iraqis. He reiterated that point during a meeting with reporters last week.
A spokesman for Gates insisted there was no distance between the Defense secretary's thinking on the timetable for Iraq and views held by the White House or Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq.
But his warnings to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki are just the latest indications from Gates that he believes the window of opportunity for the administration to get Iraq right is closing sooner rather than later.
Any determination by Gates that time is running out on the current plan could severely complicate the administration's strategy this summer, a prospect that has begun to worry some backers of the troop "surge."
"I believe Gates is on a completely different page than President Bush and Gen. Petraeus," said a former senior Defense official who has supported the buildup. "He wants to see some results by summer, and if he doesn't see those results, he seems willing to throw the towel in."