[Mind you, this might not be a fair estimate of the actual military situation. As with the war, we have to remember that our timeline is still measured in weeks and months and the body count in 10s. The military situation could change entirely; they might find an effective leadership and destroy it. But its precisely because it's a cliche way of summing things up that it matters. If the narrative changes, they could lose the political war even if they win the military one. Especially since the law and order situation can't ever become normal without a legitimate government.]
[The most interesting thing about the Iraq story is that it's still front page news. It's actually more prominent than a month ago. It didn't get drowned out by Laci Patterson after all.]
Wednesday, July 25, 2003 Page A1 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Mounting Troop Deaths in Iraq Raise Questions of U.S. Control
By Alexei Barrionuevo in Baghdad, Iraq, and Michael M. Phillips in New York
Security problems in Iraq took a dramatic turn for the worse as Iraqi fighters unleashed a series of bloody attacks on British and American soldiers that raise new questions about the source of the violence and the Pentagon's ability to curb it.
In the most deadly of Tuesday's incidents, six British soldiers were killed while training police in southern Iraq. Eight other British soldiers were wounded in a pair of attacks on a patrol and a helicopter, and Iraqi fighters unleashed some two dozen other attacks on coalition troops during the day.
All told, the day was as lethal for coalition forces as any since the early stages of the war in Iraq, which began March 19. Already, 92 Americans have died since Baghdad fell on April 9, compared with 102 before that. Of the later deaths, 56 have come since President Bush declared on May 1 that major combat operations had ended.
The latest attacks brought to the surface some broader problems for both President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. The assaults on British forces came not in the Sunni center of Iraq, which is known as a stronghold of sympathizers for Saddam Hussein, but in the Shiite- dominated south of the country, which had been relatively calm previously. That raises the prospect that an insurgency is building there, which would mean dangers to coalition forces are spreading, not receding.
The persistence of attacks will make it all the more difficult for the U.S. to withdraw American forces from Iraq. Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that while some 130,000 American forces have been brought home from the region around Iraq since the end of organized fighting there, about 146,000 U.S. troops remain -- contributing to the impression of a hostile occupation.
The attacks also underscore the difficulty military leaders are having in figuring out whether they are random, or part of a coordinated campaign of resistance led by members of the once-ruling Baath party, or even by the former Iraqi dictator himself.
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