Shirking my blogging 'responsibilities'

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I've been a delinquent. Between running back to the States to rent a place (which, by the way, ended up being a place advertised on Craigslist, as per a previous discussion), getting miserably sick upon my return to Korea, and then getting on with the business of preparing to depart Korea within the next month, I've just been off my game. And this entry probably won't be changing that. I've been following the news on MSM sources, but avoiding the blogosphere of late (what? Just reading a news story? Not even hunting for left, right, or plain old crazy spin on a blog? Seems like I must still be SICK, doesn't it?) and all I really have to offer today is a quick round-up on stories that have caught my eye lately.

We'll concentrate on Iraq. Skipping all of the prognosticating and "I told you so's" from BOTH sides generated by the two year anniversary of the invasion, I'll concentrate on a few contradictory stories. First let me say this. I believe a corner has been turned. U.S. casualties have been on a steady decline since the elections and Iraqi forces are finally starting to show an ability to carry out a mission with minimal U.S. prodding or "advice." Along those lines, John Burns (far and away the Times' best reporter in Iraq) has this to say regarding progress within Baghdad (the epicenter of the Western press-covered insurgency since the end of the seige in Fallujah):

In the first 18 months of the fighting, the insurgents mostly outmaneuvered the Americans along Haifa Street, showing they could carry the war to the capital's core with something approaching impunity.

But American officers say there have been signs that the tide may be shifting. On Haifa Street, at least, insurgents are attacking in smaller numbers, and with less intensity; mortar attacks into the Green Zone have diminished sharply; major raids have uncovered large weapons caches; and some rebel leaders have been arrested or killed.

[...]

But the change American commanders see as more promising than any other here is the deployment of large numbers of Iraqi troops. American commanders are eager to shift the fighting in Iraq to the country's own troops, allowing American units to pull back from the cities and, eventually, to begin drawing down their 150,000 troops. Haifa Street has become an early test of that strategy.

Also from the Times, we have the contrarian view - although the reporter's story doesn't accurately reflect the ground truth. Edward Wong reports on one of the increasingly rare large-scale insurgent attacks (the sort that were taking place on a regular basis 3-5 months ago) against an American unit - and its resounding defeat. And then chooses to spin this as proof nothing has changed. The Iraqi insurgents have been forced to abandon manpower and resource-intensive attacks outside of their strongest bases of operations (confined largely to Al-Anbar province) and rely mainly on terror strikes that generate news and a low-level terror campaign against the Iraqi government and security agencies. When they do try to gather resources for larger operations, they are decisively defeated. The U.S. effort to push Iraqi units into the field (where they can better gather intelligence than American units) and an increased emphasis on American foot patrols (generally more dangerous in the short term but much more valuable in the long term) have begun to alleviate some of the problems generated by rapid armored patrols racing through the streets (such patrols angered locals, encouraged insurgents, and added nothing to the American intelligence gathering effort).

Another report from the LA Times paints a more neutral picture, although the reporter also does his best to misunderstand the nature of counter-insurgency with comments like this:

Even as American units struggle to contain the insurgency, thousands of U.S. trainers are being pulled away from combat in the daunting effort to transform Hussein's hidebound, corrupt and undisciplined army into a lean, efficient force.

Hey Dave...I got news for ya. Pulling American troops to train and advise Iraqi troops is an 'economy of force' operation. Those same troops, by themselves, would be far less effective. An infantry company that serves as the core for a brigade-sized Iraqi unit is going to be far more effective and cover a much larger area than an infantry company maneuvering independently.

So anyway...I think the military situation in Iraq is improving. Now it remains to be seen if the political situation will begin to develop....

Iraq Insurgency