The war in Iraq has now officially re-started for the third time. I’m counting 1990, 2003, and November 2004. We are rightly focusing on the coalition’s attempts to retake Falluja. But we should not ignore the insurgents’ previous onslaught:
Insurgents on Sunday again targeted police stations and other symbols of the interim government. Twenty-two police officers were killed in Haditha and Haqlaniya, two towns west of Fallujah, and the attackers included foreign Arabs, according to news reports. Many of the officers were lined up and shot, according to the reports. Those assaults followed a flurry of car bombings and mortar attacks Saturday that killed more than 30 people in Samarra, a Sunni Muslim city about 65 miles north of Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi forces had reclaimed the city from insurgents last month in an operation that has been cast as a model for the attack on Fallujah.
Twenty-one Iraqi National Guard recruits were killed over the weekend as they were returning to their homes in Najaf after traveling to the capital to join up. The Najaf police chief, Ghalib Jazaari, said gunmen, tipped off by informers in the recruiting office, killed 13 of the recruits Saturday and eight more Sunday as they passed through the town of Latifiyah, a hotbed of insurgents about 70 miles north of Najaf. “We have the bodies of the first 13 here,” Jazaari said.
So Samarra – the success story – sees a new bloodbath. Allawi imposes martial law without an army to enforce it. And the possibility palpably exists for a full-scale national uprising in response to the battle for Falluja. This really is the third Iraq war. And this time, thanks largely to decisions made by this president, it is by no means certain who will win.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “The government is like a man walking in the dark who wants to avoid a small hole and falls into a big hole. At this point, the government can’t even protect itself. How can it impose a state of emergency? Allawi, when he travels, half of the American Army accompanies him!” – Mohammed Bashar Faidhi, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars. I guess that bid for reconciliation just collapsed.
MORAL EQUIVALENCE WATCH: In Holland, a mural depicting the words “Thou Shalt Not Kill” in response to the Jihadist murder of Theo van Gogh is sand-blasted for spreading intolerance. The message is allegedly “racist.” It is as if liberal society wants to commit suicide.
The Dish 