WP: Anbar Picture Grows Clearer, and Bleaker (Marine Report Grim)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/27/AR2006112701287.html

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in Anbar province.

The Marines recently filed an updated version of that assessment that stood by its conclusions and stated that as of mid-November, the problems in troubled Anbar province have not improved, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday. "The fundamental questions of lack of control, growth of the insurgency and criminality" remain the same, the official said.

The Marines' August memo, a copy of which was shared with The Washington Post, is far more bleak than some officials suggested when they described it in late summer. The report describes Iraq's Sunni minority as "embroiled in a daily fight for survival," fearful of "pogroms" by the Shiite majority and increasingly dependent on al-Qaeda in Iraq as its only hope against growing Iranian dominance across the capital.

True or not, the memo says, "from the Sunni perspective, their greatest fears have been realized: Iran controls Baghdad and Anbaris have been marginalized." Moreover, most Sunnis now believe it would be unwise to count on or help U.S. forces because they are seen as likely to leave the country before imposing stability.

Between al-Qaeda's violence, Iran's influence and an expected U.S. drawdown, "the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point" that U.S. and Iraqi troops "are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar," the assessment found. In Anbar province alone, at least 90 U.S. troops have died since Sept. 1.

and only wanted to play with all the toys in the box that his daddy's cronies gave him when they handed him the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania.

:nuke:

bush and cheney.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

and "shock and awe"d to death. Nor do they appear to appreciate the joys of having their country invaded & occupied.

Strange.

I mean, we Americans would love to be invaded & occupied by a foreign army who can't speak English, don't know or understand or give a fuck about our culture, our kids, our lives, our property, our country.

Nope, I just don't understand why we're losing bush's hitleresque "supreme crime" war of choice aggression.

I really don't.