Hi Neocon; Re: "Indeed, unlike the Israelis, we largely can trust the indigenous armed services, and will transfer the main functions of law and order and basic security to them this summer."
Did you see this news item of March 12th?
4 Iraqi policemen, former officer arrested in U.S. civilian slayings
Iraqi security forces have captured and are interrogating four of their own policemen plus a former cop from Saddam Hussein's regime as chief suspects in this week's execution-style killings of two American civilians who were doing human rights work near Babylon, U.S. coalition officials said Friday.
...
sanluisobispo.com
Re: "We will likely continue to have bases in place ... have no territorial disputes over settlements ..."
What we have instead are "territorial disputes" over bases (and oil). The result is that we're taking military casualties at a considerably higher rate than the Israelis, but then again, Iraq is bigger than Palestine.
Our civilian casualties are fewer, largely due to the fact that we have so few civilians over there. Of course that difference in civilian casualties goes to the heart of why it is that the Israelis are stuck in Palestine, but we're only temporarily in Iraq.
By the way, it was soon after the above news item that our casualties in Iraq started piling up again (i.e. 23 in just the past 9 days as compared to the same number in all of February). My guess is that the increase in casualties is associated with an increase in patrols, and that we increased our patrols as a result of finding the Iraqi police lacking, largely as a consequence of the above sort of activity.
To be more explicit, I would guess that after Iraqi police were implicated in executing US civilians, US civilians complained about an absence of US patrols. The resulting increase in patrols caused our increase in fatalities.
-- Carl |
