More US soldiers in Baghdad in an attempt to control the capital, meaning controlling the militias, this is the news. The US army is supposed to do that with the help of scraps of an Iraqi army and police that are themselves tottering towards becoming militias without the name, under a puppet government that can’t show any semblance of force except by turning towards Shi’a militias, with Iran in the background.
In a few months, say next Sept-Nov, right in time for the presidential campaign, Bush and Co can turn around, whatever the result (failure near guaranteed), and say: “at least we tried, and we would have been successful hadn’t we been hampered by the resistance of enemies of the country’s best interests (=anyone not with us).” There might be government tears shed for dead soldiers. Perhaps even for the tens of thousand of wounded. None for the hundreds of thousand of Iraqis. And the price of gas has been falling a bit (52 dollars the barrel of whatever crude this morning): what is its real cost? Where is the free market for this commodity? Do we count war in its pricing?