Only Baghdad under US control, if that.

[happydreams]

"Patrick Cockburn, from "Baghdad Is Under Siege" in the 11-1-06 Independent:

Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital. ... Well-armed Sunni tribes now largely surround Baghdad and are fighting Shia militias to complete the encirclement.

Note the complete absence of U.S. troops from Cockburn's (or anyone else's) account of these battles. It was only a couple of weeks ago that the U.S. command admitted the failure of its plan to encircle Baghdad-with checkpoints and a ludicrous "trench," intended to keep fighters and weapons from entering the city, or leaving the city, or something. Now we learn that Sunni insurgents have finished the job for us, just as Sunni and Shiite militias now control most of the country outside the largely autonomous Kurdish north. The U.S. controls ... well ... the Green Zone, and a few bases it would rather not venture far from.

In Sunni Anbar province, home of Fallujah, Ramadi, and other long-running centers of resistance, the U.S. military and the nominal Iraqi government have no control at all. From Fallujah, Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily, in this Oct. 31 dispatch with Inter Press Service, quote a senior leader of the Arab National Movement: "The U.S. embassy has real control , as long as there are resistance fighters who are firmly holding the Iraqi streets in Sunni areas, and militias with their death squads controlling the rest of the country as well as the huge oil market."


Then there was this sobering tidbit last week, from the 10-31-06 Washington Post:

The U.S. Air Force is asking the Pentagon's leadership for a staggering $50 billion in emergency funding for fiscal 2007-an amount equal to nearly half its annual budget. ... source familiar with the Air Force plans said the extra funds would help pay to transport growing numbers of U.S. soldiers being killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That's a lot of American bodies.

Meanwhile, Bechtel, the second-largest U.S contractor in Iraq (after Halliburton), led the list of U.S.-based companies that announced last week that they are pulling operations out of Iraq. In Bechtel's words, continuing work in Iraq is simply "too dangerous." What happens to Donald Rumsfeld's privatized military when the private contractors run a cost/benefit analysis and decide there's no money to be made from having their asses kicked?

That, truly, is the bottom line. The U.S. has been finding creative ways, despite and because of its overwhelming force, to lose this war since the day it arrived. It's been a 44-month clusterfuck, and counting....."

more




http://eatthestate.org/11-05/BattleIraq.htm

[Arkansas Granny]

1. It's hard for me to believe that even Baghdad is under U.S.

control when events like this happen:

Five Iraqi police officers held over Baghdad kidnappings

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1947720,00.html

[Porcupine]

8. The same way that anthill in my back yard is under MY control

I have a can of gasoline and a shovel. I could kill all the ants if I wanted to. But short of that there is no way for me to stop some of them from stinging me if I insist on standing on the anthill. As to what the rest of the ants are up to? Who knows.

[azurnoir]

2. Baghdad under US control??????????

Considering that 100 people were kidnapped from the Ministry of Higher Education building in Baghdad today that control is questionable at best.

[happydreams]

7. Yea, "control" was meant to be used loosely.

[Divernan]

3. I hope the Air Force really wants that money for emergency evacuation

of LIVE soldiers, not dead ones. In Nam, the forces retreated to Saigon. Sounds like any US forces outside of Baghdad will not be able to get to the airport there by ground transport, and there will be many many helicopters needed to bring them to the Baghdad airport.

[nealmhughes]

4. Cockburn's reporting has been the best of anyone's in Iraq.

Mega kudos to the Independent and him!

[happydreams]

10. Is he related to Alexander Cockburn of "The Nation" magazine?

A. Cockburn's insight has been an inspiration to me for decades.

[nealmhughes]

11. Yes, they have another journalist brother, also.

[SoCalDem]

5. Sounds just like Afghanistan

I crack up when they call Karzai "president" of Afghanistan.. he's the appointed MAYOR of Kabul.. that's IT.

[slaveplanet]

6. The US controls

the green zone, the air and a handful of bases, and it's been that way for quite some time.

Over time it will be doubtful how safe it will be to control those.

[Jacobin]

9. Yup.

That's it

[MGD]

13. We should quit trying to control the whole country and just focus on controlling Baghdad anyways.

Let thm have their civil war.

[lostnotforgotten]

12. Shades Of VietNam - Helicopter Evacuations Next

Bush = Nixon = Pitiful Failure!

[happydreams]

14. If we don't learn this time, we never will.