- BAGHDAD -- "The famous
"surge" is not working. Casualties are not going down and civilian
deaths in our raging civil war are at an all time high. A reputable British
medical magazine (The Lancet. Ed) published the figure of over 600,000
Iraqi civilian dead and from what I have seen here, I entirely accept this.
I had a copy of the mag on my desk and had finished reading it when a senior
officer came in to drop off another of the endless puff reports we are
expected to send around to the tired, furious and growingly mutinous troops.
He saw the magazine, picked it up and read part of the article before taking
it away. "Don't read such defeatist crap!" he said.
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- Now we have little dramas playing out here for the American
press. Top brass, suitably dressed and accompanied with a small army of
the press, visit military hospitals and are photographed Being Compassionate
with mangled soldiers. And afterwards, they leave the wards with the photographers
in tow, go back to their quarters, have a drink, wash their hands several
times and have an expensive lunch.
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- We have Israeli liaison officers here who still are
hoping that Bush will attack Iran but it won't happen in spite of the flood
of "leaked" propaganda about "massing troops" and other
such childish lies. We haven't got the manpower and the Iranians have all
kinds of deadly Russian missiles. If we moved a naval task force into the
Gulf, they would pick our carriers off like a cat in a cage.
-
- Much threatening about attacks because of the captured
Brits but we all know the Iranians will eventually release them, unharmed,
when they make their point. Were they in Iranian waters? No one knows as
borders are so screwed up that anything is possible. Most of the new troops
flooding in here are not well armed, have no body armor and many have no
weapons. The old hands will send them out to patrol the streets and get
blown into cat meat while they stay in their barracks and play poker or
smoke pot. MREs are so boring that broiled camel liver or thigh of small
child that wandered in front a bored GI sniper is much more palatable.
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