Update for April

There's still almost two weeks left in April and now the US military death toll in Iraq is up to 100 for the month. There's not much else to say except that the insurgency shows little in the way of a decrease in intensity.

Failure is an option

I was planning to write this on Monday (April 12th) when US combat deaths in Iraq had reached 73 for the month of April. Today I hear it's over 90.

9-11, or at least the conditions and security breakdowns that lead to 9-11, was no-one's fault. Wait, make that the other guy's fault. Oh, what possibly could we have done differently?!

Exit strategy?

The past couple of weeks, the situation in Iraq has worsened, and (pardon my grammer) is getting worser. Besides the various "insurgents" taking the fight directly to American and other coalition troops, inflicting significant casulties, there is growing evidence that both Sunni and Shiite factions are joining together in the uprising against American occupation.

In this light, I couldn't let pass by a Maureen Dowd editorial in the NY Times, that quoted SecDef Rumsfeld saying the following:

"We're trying to explain how things are going, and they are going as they are going. Some things are going well and some things obviously are not going well. You're going to have good days and bad days." [On the road to democracy, this] "is one moment, and there will be other moments. And there will be good moments and there will be less good moments."

Granted Dowd's firmly on the "other" side of the political aisle. However I can't understand why anyone would think such a pithy analysis can be simply accepted by the public.

Come on, tell it like it is. It's becoming hard for me to believe that anyone can say they know how this is going to turn out in the end. Personally, I think we all should be getting very worried.