Wolfowitz gets a little taste

On his second visit to Iraq, Wolfowitless experiences an attack first hand. I bet he doesn't go back a third time.

From MSNBC this morning:

AFTER the 6:10 a.m. attack, a shaken-looking Paul Wolfowitz, the visiting deputy defense secretary, said the attack would not deter the United States in its mission to transform Iraq...Wolfowitz, on a three-day Iraq tour, was believed to have been in the Al Rasheed, whose western concrete face was left pockmarked with a half-dozen or more blast holes and shattered windows in two dozen rooms.

...After the attack, scores of American officials fled the building in pajamas and shorts, heading for a nearby convention center housing occupation offices, witnesses said.

It would be funny if people weren't hurt, and one soldier killed.

Scores of American officials need to know how swimmingly things are going. They also need to know what life in a war zone is like.

Unfortunately, I think, all they'll come away with is confirmation that those Iraqis are evil terrorists.

Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein, arrived in Iraq on Friday. After Sunday’s attack, he said the U.S.-led coalition was achieving success in stabilizing Iraq despite actions of “criminals who are trying to destabilize this country.” Wolfowitz described them as “a few who refuse to accept the reality” of the new Iraq and he promised the United States would continue in its mission.

Why don't you damned reporters talk about the successes! Give me that film.

A "few criminals" are launching 26 attacks per day on American forces. Spin that war, Wolfie! Spin!

U.S. officials had warned that “Islamic extremists” planned to carry out a suicide bombing attack against an unspecified hotel in the city’s Karrada district used by Westerners. But the warning did not specify a target, and the Al Rasheed is not in that district.

Oops. Wrong district.

A car bomb on Oct. 12 against the Baghdad Hotel, also used by U.S. officials, killed eight people, including the bomber, but security measures prevented the vehicle from reaching the building before it exploded.

There's a message here.

After the hotel attack, U.S. troops flooded the area, closing off roads around the “green zone,” an already heavily guarded district of central Baghdad that includes the palace headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition and the offices of the interim Iraqi Governing Council. The morning clampdown caused monumental traffic jams.

The rockets were fired two hours after coalition authorities ended the nighttime curfew in the Iraqi capital in preparation for the Muslim holy month Ramadan, which begins here Monday. Officials cited improved security as the reason for ending the curfew.

....Security guards of the new Facilities Protection Service spotted the activity.

“We approached him (the driver) to tell him to move the car. When he saw us, he fled,” one of the injured guards, Jabbar Tarek, said at a nearby hospital.

As Tarek and others approached, the rockets fired off from the blue trailer, police said. Tarek said the guards weren’t armed, or “I would have fired on him.”

Nice. Unarmed security guards. I wonder what "improved security" is.

“There is no guarantee we can protect against this kind of thing unless we have soldiers on every block,” said Lt. Brian Dowd of Nanuet, New York, a 1st Armored Division reconnaissance officer at the scene.

But there's no problem with morale. And everything is going well. So just send more soldiers, and cease the leave program. We're doing fine.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.