I've praised Steve Gilliard's Weblog numerous times, because I find it to be a valuable source of information links and analysis of the Iraq War. As far as I know, Gilliard (like most of us Americans) doesn't speak Arabic. But he's been paying close attention to the war news and analyzing events more minutely than most anything you'll get on television.
He tends to be pessimistic, and unfortunately for us all, his pessimism has been largely borne out. The war cheerleaders keep telling us to look at the good news. But attacks like the ones on the central Green Zone in Baghdad the last couple of days are painfully hard to ignore. Gilliard writes:
It's now to the place where every word the government says about Iraq is either wrong or a lie. Guerrillas never got within RPG [rocket propelled grenade] range of MACV [in Vietnam], or of Soviet HQ in Afghanistan. Yet, we're supposed to believe that the US has a handle on security issues in Iraq? They're flying Apache missions into central Baghdad. One day, either they're going to waste a bunch of civilians or come crashing down as a Strela hits them from close in.
This is the environment they expect to have elections and a trial of Saddam in? Who are they kidding? We know Bush wants to flee the occupation, but come on, without a better security situation, you're inviting a civil war to erupt. You can't even safeguard the police, much less leading Shia clerics, former Baathists or the Green Zone and you expect to secure elections? Fact is, US troops can't even monitor a polling place in most of Iraq without catching sniper fire. Without basic security, elections are a either a pipe dream or future fraud. If you can't do something as fundamental as protect the country's main pipeline, any talk of elections is a fantasy.
I think he may be a bit off-track in one sense. It's possible to have meaningful elections even if parts of the country have serious fighting going on. But for the current occupation government (Bremer's CPA) to have its way on the full range of political, military and economic goals, a much higher level of security will be required.
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