I just looked at more Iraq news coming in late this evening. I think right now that they have no choice but to escalate, which as I mentioned earlier, isn't a smart move. But we're out of smart moves at this point. The time that we were supposed to plan for this already passed...and the Bushies idiotically set the June 30 date as the drop dead date for passing over authority. Obviously, we won't pull our troops out then, but if we were to increase the number of troops so close to the deadline, it would show the timeline to be completely made up for political reasons.

Do I doubt the U.S. military can crush the irregulars in various city? No, not at all. But unlike the situation in Israel, U.S. troops are far from home, defending a land we "conquered" in order to find weapon that now don't exists. What about the democracy plan? Well, let's just say that by the time June 30 rolls around, I'll be extremely surprised if things are perfectally peaceful. For every innocent person you kill you anger tons more, and the size and scope of the weapons the Americans are using will inevitably hurt people who aren't actually fighting. It's unavoidable. Perhaps if we'd lined up the Sunni or Shia behind us early, instead of providing each a big, fat target to blow up, things might be different. Perhaps if we hadn't listened to Chalabi so much. Perhaps if the plans CIA and State drew up hadn't been nixed by the DoD. A lot of perhaps, perhaps. The point I want to make is this: even without the benefit of hindsight, a great deal of smart people here had already worked out preventative solutions to many of the problems we're facing now. Those ideas were ignored for the "welcomed as liberators" meme.

And, man, is it biting us in the ass now.