How bad is it going to get? How much more incompetent can the prosecution of this war be? These questions will not be answered for another 19 months unfortunately. But here’s a pretty good indication of how well the “liberation” is going.
BAGHDAD — The U.S. military has offered rewards of up to $200,000 for information leading to the return of three missing American soldiers, a U.S. general said Wednesday. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. troops south of Baghdad, said the offer was made on 50,000 leaflets distributed in the area where the troops disappeared after a pre-dawn ambush Saturday in which four American troops and an Iraq soldier were killed.
Word of the reward was also broadcast over loudspeakers as part of a massive search involving 4,000 U.S. troops and 2,000 Iraqis, Lynch told The Associated Press.
So field commanders quote the 143 intelligence leads they are following. They mention what they will do to find these poor boys:
"We've done so much as to drain canals after a report that the bodies were in a canal," he said. "So we're leaving no stone unturned."…"Some of those leads tell us that the soldiers have been taken out of the area but the majority tell us that they're still in the area."
This is amateur hour at the Pentagon and White House. The capture of these soldiers was the result of the surge which we now know has done little to quell the violence in Al Anbar province. A week or so earlier nine US soldiers were killed in another one of these mini forward bases. The surge is an illusion propped up by talking points and a passive American press. The wingnuts who support suppressing dissent apparently don’t think that three captured soldiers will lower the moral of the soldiers of the field.
Link here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Next we find out that our new vaunted armoured vehicle is so slow being created most soldiers won’t ever see one, we find out that they do not fit inside some heavy transport aircraft, and we find out that the Iraqis have already learned to defeat them.
Link here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
A string of heavy losses from roadside bombs has raised new questions about the Stryker, the Army troop-carrying vehicle hailed by supporters as the key to a leaner, more mobile force.
Since the Strykers went into action in violent Diyala province north of Baghdad two months ago, losses of the vehicles have been rising steadily, U.S. officials said.
A single company in Diyala lost five Strykers this month in less than a week, according to soldiers familiar with the losses, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to release the information. In one of the biggest hits, six U.S. soldiers and a journalist died when a bomb exploded beneath their Stryker, the biggest one-day loss for the battalion in more than two years. "They are learning how to defeat them," a senior Army official said of Iraqi insurgents.
Link here: http://www.concordmonitor.com/...
It also doesn’t help that attacks are down negligibly.
Link here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Essentially the unraveling of the Iraqi theatre will continue at this pace until the Poseur is out of office. Spinning this disaster into progress will require more and more magical thinking and fewer facts and more lying to the public. One in four Americans apparently buys into this President and these policies.
Keep this in mind when you hear about us liberating 28 million people and sponsoring free elections. Keep this in mind when you hear any policy initiatives come out of the White House. This is where we are at. And the only silver lining is that the Iraq war is essentially killing the GOP.
And as Martha says: That’s a good thing.