So, Mr. Vice pResident, care to re-state your thoughts? Or does the Pentagon hate America now, too? And the part about Iraqis and Al-Qeada now working together? Well, I guess you could say: Mission Accomplished.
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Pentagon: Iraq insurgency steady until '07
WASHINGTON - The Sunni Arab heart of the Iraqi insurgency seems likely to hold its strength the rest of the year, and some of its leaders are now collaborating with al-Qaida terrorists, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
In a report assessing the situation in Iraq, required quarterly by Congress, the Pentagon painted a mixed picture on a day when the U.S. military command in Baghdad said 1,500 more combat troops have arrived in the country. The extra troops are part of an intensified effort to wrest control of the provincial capital of Ramadi from insurgents.
The report to Congress offered a relatively dim picture of economic progress, with few gains in improving basic services like electricity, and it provided no promises of U.S. troop reductions anytime soon.
Link: http://news.yahoo.com/...
And no, Mary Sue, your son won't be home for Christmas this year:
Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq watcher with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Tuesday there is no clear basis for believing U.S. troop levels can be reduced anytime soon without risking further deterioration in the security situation. He said the best measure of progress is not the number of U.S. troops in Iraq but the degree to which their role in counterinsurgency operations is assumed by Iraqis.
"I think, in honesty, that now looks a lot more like 2007 at the earliest (for) really having serious reductions in the U.S. combat role (and) being certain that the U.S. casualty levels are going down on a lasting basis and being able to reduce the costs of the war," Cordesman said in a telephone interview.