THE SURGE IS NOT WORKING (2 Articles from Today)

The escalation in Vietnam, er, I mean, the "Surge" in Iraq is not working. No surprise there, but I guess we still have to wait until September, and then the September after that...

Why?

How many more?


BBC: Despair Stalks Baghdad As Plan Falters

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6575717.stm

Despair stalks Baghdad as plan falters
By Andrew North
BBC News, Baghdad

The US surge involves intelligence-led raids to track down militants
Trying to get into the centre of Baghdad earlier this week offered one view of how far away the Americans and Iraqi authorities are from gaining control here.

We were at the airport. Just before we were due to leave, the entrance car park was hit by a car bomb. US troops and private security forces who guard the perimeter locked the whole area down for the next four hours. No traffic was allowed in or out. While we waited with scores of other vehicles, mortars were fired at the airport. Fortunately for us they landed on the other side of the runway, plumes of smoke shooting into the air.

You won't have heard about any of this because at the same time a series of other far more serious attacks was taking place.

One was at the Sadriya market in the city centre, where a massive car bomb killed more than 140 people. It was placed at the entrance to a set of barriers put up around another part of the market where a previous single bomb, in February, claimed more than 130 lives.

The market blast "did not penetrate the emplaced barriers" a later US military press release helpfully pointed out, ignoring the fact that the bombers had yet again adapted their tactics with vicious perfection - setting off their device at the point where crowds congregated outside and at the very moment when they were busiest.

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Beyond The Green Zone, Bush's Surge Is Failing

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/51469

Beyond the Green Zone's 'Gated Community,' Bush's Surge Is Failing

By Patrick Cockburn, CounterPunch. Posted May 5, 2007.

Bush's "surge" has put army and police checkpoints everywhere in Baghdad but Iraqis are terrified approaching them because they do not know if the men in uniform they see are in fact death squads.

- snip -

Now the sectarian body count is on the rise again. Some 30 bodies, each shot in the head, were found on Wednesday alone. The main new American tactic is proving counter-productive. This is the sealing off entire neighbourhoods either by concrete walls or barriers of rubbish so there is only a single entrance and exit. Speaking of Sunni districts like al-Adhamiyah a government official said: "We are creating mini- Islamic republics."

This is born out by anecdotal evidence. The uncle of a friend called Mohammed ­ it is in the nature of Baghdad that nobody wants their full name published ­ died of natural causes. The family, all Sunni, wanted to bury him but they were unable to reach the nearest cemetery in Abu Ghraib. Instead they went to one in Adhamiyah. As they entered the cemetery armed civilians, whom they took to be al Qaida from their way of speaking, asked directly: "Are any of you Shia?" Only when reassured that they were all Sunni were they allowed to bury their relative.

The failure of the 'surge' comes because it is not accompanied by any political reconciliation. On the contrary the government is wholly factionalised. For instance the two vice presidents, the Sunni Tariq al- Hashimi, and the Shia Adel Abdel Mehdi, may make conciliatory statements in public but one Iraqi observer notes that "Tariq only employs Sunni and Adel only Shia."

- snip -

So many areas are now sealed off in Baghdad that there are continuous traffic jams. This presents a problem for drivers. If they try to avoid the jam by driving off the main road they may enter an area where militiamen rule who may kill them. One friend who got back from Syria found that, because of an attack on a government patrol, his neighbourhood was closed off to traffic. "I had to walk for 40 minutes with my heavy suitcase," he lamented.

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From today's Boston Globe.

globe with a population that is hostile to our actions, troops, and aims.

The only way that there would be a chance of succeeding is if the people were sympathetic to our cause. But since we blew their country to hell and killed hundreds of thousands of their people, I can't see that happening any time soon.

This neocon scam to corner the oil market and to rule the Middle East was insanity. Too damn bad that there were so few of us who knew that in the beginning.

I can't wait for the war crimes trials.