Iraq

Insurgency

Insurgent attacks to disrupt Baghdad's supplies of crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, water and electricity have reached a degree of coordination and sophistication not seen before, Iraqi and American officials say.

The new pattern, they say, shows that the insurgents have a deep understanding of the complex network of pipelines, power cables and reservoirs feeding Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

[...]

A new analysis by some of those officials shows that the choice of targets and the timing of sabotage attacks has evolved over the past several months, shifting from economic targets to become what amounts to a siege of the capital.

In a stark illustration of the change, of more than 30 sabotage attacks on the oil infrastructure this year, no reported incident has involved the southern crude oil pipelines that are Iraq's main source of revenue. Instead, the attacks have aimed at gas and oil lines feeding power plants and refineries and providing fuel for transportation around Baghdad and in the north.

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The only reasonable conclusion, said Aiham Alsammarae, the Iraqi electricity minister, is that the sabotage operation is being led by former members of the ministries themselves, possibly aided by sympathetic holdovers.
  NY Times article

Insanity

Never before in our country’s history has an administration charged with defending our nation been so lacking in hands-on combat experience and therefore so ignorant about the art and science of war.

Now the increasingly flummoxed Bush team is stealing the page on Vietnamization from Nixon’s Exit Primer, coupled with the same deceitful tactics he used to get us out of the almost decade-long Vietnam quagmire: telling lies.

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President Bush told the nation that Iraq had nine fully trained combat infantry battalions. Just as he was proclaiming the prowess of the Iraqi army, a major in the Iraqi Training Command told me that the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, when committed to their first battle, threw down their weapons and ran. “Not sure where the president is getting his info, but we have only one battalion that’s good-to-go,” he said.

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The hard truth is that it takes a good 10 years to build an army from the ground up. And the major emphasis must be placed not on numbers such as how many battalions have been fielded or how ready the recruits are, but rather on good, old-fashioned officer training. Until this happens and the corrupt Iraqi officer leadership - from gold bar to four stars - gets a good scrub, our troops are stuck in the tar.

[...]

[L]ying won’t get our troops out of Iraq without our national security taking a long-term hit that our country simply cannot afford.
  (Ret.) Col. David Hackworth article

Inevitability

[T]he best news in a long time has got to be Time magazine's remarkable story about negotiations taking place between the U.S. and the Iraqi insurgency.

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The more realistic wing of the American power elite – invariably the military wing, as opposed to the warmongering "idealists" of the Chickenhawk Brigade, largely civilians – is finally taking the initiative.

Negotiations are a good way to gather intelligence on an insurgency we know very little about, and this is doubtless the major justification involved for maintaining such contacts. But the mere fact that this initiative exists is evidence that at least some in a position of authority – albeit not in the White House – are looking to build the foundations for a political solution. Clearly, it was the Americans who initiated the negotiations:
  AntiWar article

I'm not sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing these days. But there is such a lot going on.