Easy to forget that about Iraq these days, and the Bush Administration would like us to forget about it...or at least think things are peachy. But two important stories on the front page of the New York Times highlight the problems:
First piece is about how the White House is freaking out because there is no new government and the insurgency is becoming even more deadly:
Worried about a political deadlock in Iraq and a spike in mayhem from an emboldened insurgency, the Bush administration has pressed Iraqi leaders in recent days to end their stalemate over forming a new government, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney personally exhorting top Kurdish and Shiite politicians to come together.Second article "Marines From Iraq Sound Off About Want of Armor and Men" is a classic. U.S. Marines feel compelled to complain about the lack of armor and the deadly effect it had on them.
The White House pressure, reported by Iraqi officials in Baghdad and an American official in Washington on Sunday, was a change in the administration's hands-off approach to Iraqi politics. The change was disclosed as insurgents unleashed a devastating technique, with twin double bombings at a police academy in Tikrit and an ice cream parlor in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad that killed 21 and wounded scores more.
In both attacks, a second bomb detonated within minutes after the first, killing and wounding policemen and bystanders who had rushed to care for victims of the initial blasts.
On May 29, 2004, a station wagon that Iraqi insurgents had packed with C-4 explosives blew up on a highway in Ramadi, killing four American marines who died for lack of a few inches of steel.Marines complaining. Practically unheard of before the presidency of George W. Bush.
The four were returning to camp in an unarmored Humvee that their unit had rigged with scrap metal, but the makeshift shields rose only as high as their shoulders, photographs of the Humvee show, and the shrapnel from the bomb shot over the top.
"The steel was not high enough," said Staff Sgt. Jose S. Valerio, their motor transport chief, who along with the unit's commanding officers said the men would have lived had their vehicle been properly armored. "Most of the shrapnel wounds were to their heads."
Among those killed were Rafael Reynosa, a 28-year-old lance corporal from Santa Ana, Calif., whose wife was expecting twins, and Cody S. Calavan, a 19-year-old private first class from Lake Stevens, Wash., who had the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, tattooed across his back.
They were not the only losses for Company E during its six-month stint last year in Ramadi. In all, more than one-third of the unit's 185 troops were killed or wounded, the highest casualty rate of any company in the war, Marine Corps officials say.
In returning home, the leaders and Marine infantrymen have chosen to break an institutional code of silence and tell their story, one they say was punctuated not only by a lack of armor, but also by a shortage of men and planning that further hampered their efforts in battle, destroyed morale and ruined the careers of some of their fiercest warriors.
Okay, I'll say it. Imagine if Clinton or any Democrat was President and this happened. Heads would roll. But for the GOP, talk about supporting the troops is cheap. When it comes to actually supporting them, the GOP doesn't go there.
Iraq is still a huge mess. Huge.
