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Gambling on Defeat
The 229 Democrats and 17 Republicans who voted in the House Friday for a nonbinding disapproval of the troop surge in Baghdad, designed and proposed by General Petraeus, think they are pretty smart. Yet even as they were taking a risky gamble that the Coalition forces already on the move into Baghdad in force will certainly fail, many of the first escalation reports in from Baghdad (and in Anbar) have been good signs. The Iraqi army is moving up in force, as promised, and the Americans were already arriving just behind them. According to the Iraqi army, the numbers of bombings and killings in the city has fallen by 89 percent.Meanwhile, the senior leaders in the Mahdi army in Sadr City no doubt encouraging their followers to go to their deaths for Allah have apparently heeded warnings to abandon ship. Slinking away like embarrassed rats, they have already, by some reports, disappeared from view. In Anbar Province, a dozen tribal leaders have signed up with the American Marines to provide small armies of police and rapid-reaction forces, angry enough to drive al Qaeda murderers out of their midst (al Qaeda assassinations have hit too close to home for many of them)... Posted by: Fred 2007-02-18 |
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