The Washington Post paints a rather horrifying picture of what the situation is really like in Iraq right now. A new secret report the Post their hands on shows that the situation is hardly getting better, and it's hardly limited to just 3 provinces, which both Bush and Allawi have alleged recently. So Allawi outright lied to a joint session of Congress this week, and Bush lied again, and repeatedly, about Iraq this entire past week. And this is the same man who says we won't need a draft to fix this mess - since of course, the mess doesn't exist.
In number and scope, the attacks compiled in the Kroll reports suggest a broad and intensifying campaign of insurgent violence that contrasts sharply with assessments by Bush administration officials and Iraq's interim prime minister that the instability is contained to small pockets of the country....
To many natives and foreigners living in Iraq, the portrait of progress that Allawi painted during his trip to Washington does not depict reality.
After his speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, Allawi described Baghdad as "very good and safe." In fact, during the period for which security reports were available, the number of attacks in the capital averaged 22 a day....
In his remarks Thursday, Allawi did not specify the three provinces he deemed insecure, nor did he specify what he meant when he contended that violence in those provinces had been limited to "certain pockets." But since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Baghdad and three of the country's largest and most populous provinces -- Anbar in the west, Salahuddin to the north and Babil to the south -- have been the principal hotbeds of insurgent violence. And according to the Kroll reports, recent violence appears to have been widespread rather than limited....
Moreover, the security reports indicate that a majority of the hostile acts committed against U.S. and Iraqi security forces over the past two weeks have occurred outside those three provinces. For example, the cities of Amarah in the southern province of Maysan and Samawah in Muthanna province, also in the south, had long been relatively free of violence but are now experiencing frequent attacks, the reports indicate.....
The security situation has grown so dire that many of the few remaining nongovernmental aid organizations left in Iraq are making plans to withdraw.
