Iraq

Don't miss this very important AP article that actually looks at the numbers behind the surge. Short version: "the surge" has pushed the violence out of Baghdad, but overall violence is running about double last year.

Despite the statistics I chopped out last night, I think the key excerpt from the article is this,

However, Brig. Gen. Richard Sherlock, deputy director for operational planning for the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said violence in Iraq "has continued to decline and is at the lowest level since June 2006."

He offered no statistics to back his claim.....

(NYTimes) 85% of the detainees in US custody are Sunni.

(AP) Maliki "lashes back" at Sens. Clinton and Levin by name.

The Sunday Times meets with Ibrahim al-Shammari, a representative of the Islamic Army,

According to Shammari, however, the gains in Anbar will be shortlived. He said the Islamic Army had signed a ceasefire with Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The country was to be carved into spheres of influence where the Islamic Army and Al-Qaeda in Iraq could operate independently of each other. It would represent an enormous setback for the surge.....

(Reuters) "U.S. forces have rebranded one of the main insurgent groups in Iraq and now use the term "concerned local nationals" to refer to a group that once claimed responsibility for killing scores of Americans."

(Time) Joe Klein actually had a decent piece which frames current US efforts as secondary within the context of the Iraqi civil war.

And, as for the overall goals of the war in Iraq, (remember, to combat terrorism, right?)

When the United States struck Afghanistan in 2001, "there were probably 3,000 core Al Qaeda operatives," says Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School. "We killed or captured about 1,000; about 1,000 more ended up in distant parts of the world. And about 1,000 ended up in Waziristan. But the great terror university in Afghanistan is gone; they've relied on the Web since. They haven't had the hands-on instruction and the bonding of the camps. That's resulted in low-skill levels. Their tradecraft is really much poorer."

The danger now, says Arquilla, is that the longer the Iraq War goes on, the more skilled the new generations of jihadists will become. "They're getting re-educated," he says. "The first generation of Al Qaeda came through the [Afghan] camps. The second generation are those who've logged on [to Islamist Web sites]. The next generation will be those who have come through the crucible of Iraq. Eventually, their level of skill is going to be greater than the skill of the original generation."

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