Although some officials depicted the insurgency as waning, June, July, and August featured many brutal attacks. General Richard B. Meyers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated on July 21, 2005, that the attacks on U.S. troops were increasingly lethal and that assassinations of Iraqi officials had mounted.6 Attacks on Iraqi civilians are polarizing because they exacerbate sectarianism, and those on police and military recruits constrain U.S. efforts to speedily build up Iraqi military and police capacity.
- Sherifa Zuhur, A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the Future of Counterinsurgency (US Army Strategic Studies Institute; Dec 2005)
Tuesday was an apocalyptic day in Iraq. I am not normally exactly sanguine about the situation there. But the atmospherics are very, very bad, in a way that most Western observers will miss. ...
Then guerrillas set off a huge bomb in a Shiite corner of the mostly Sunni Arab Dura quarter of Baghdad, killing 22 and wounding 28. Another 9 were killed in other violence around Iraq. These attacks are manifestations of an unconventional civil war.
- Juan Cole, Shiite Protests Roil Iraq Informed Comment blog 02/2/06
Up until now, Cole has been reluctant to describe events in Iraq as constituting a civil war, even a low-level one. It sounds like he's starting to see it as a civil war, too.
The hardline Shiite Mahdi Army has come out of Sadr City and is all over Baghdad. They are clashing with Sunnis in Basra.
Sunni leader Tariq al- Hashimi threatened reprisals for reprisal killings.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim blamed the US for holding back the Badr Corps.
Grand Ayatollah Sistani called for nonviolent street protests that he must know won't be nonviolent.
Iran is blaming Bush and the Israelis, which is ridiculous but already widely believed in Iraq and Iran.
The threat of terrorism and attacks on Americans just went way up.
- Juan Cole, Iran Blames Bush/Sunni Shiite Clashes Informed Comment blog 02/22/06
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