Has no one but me noted the ebb and flow of insurgent activity over the last four years? Well, guess what? There have been periodic spikes and lulls in the fighting.

It's August. It's hot. Ramadan is coming up. The mujahedeen are laying back, replenishing weapons, developing new tactics, and waiting for their next "surge." Also, the Pentagon is playing the Sunni card, allowing Sunni militias to defend their areas from shiite militias without molestation, and playing Sunni factions against one another.

The situation is probably not getting better, it's getting different.

This bullsh*t in the NYT yesterday would have you believe there is a large qualitative difference in Iraq since the "surge" began. It is possible that is true, but I am extremely skeptical.

mediaho

You have confounded me with someone else. I was against the Iraq War from the before the beginning. I was arguing against it in Fark forums in the Winter of '02 - '03. I predicted a protracted guerrilla war, stupendous expense, a humanitarian disaster inside Iraq, and deeply negative foreign policy consequences.

Believe it or not, I batted about .975 on my predictions. The only thing I got wrong was predicting that Bush would back off when the scope of the disaster became clear. It's hard to predict irrational behavior.

Boy was I ever excoriated and insulted and piled upon and called every name in the book by Farkers back in those days - by morons who couldn't predict the sunrise. Most have changed their tune since then.