Thanks for the link, Michael. I've got a critical, but depressing big post about Honor Killings coming up, but I haven't opened the vein on that yet.

Whew! This blog is getting esoteric!

Thanks for doing that, Patrick. Someone needs to.

Did you see this post on Kurdistan? I thought it was interesting.

A truck bomb took out the Interior Ministry in Irbil?

Not a good sign.

Very interesting interview. Thanks.

alphie: A truck bomb took out the Interior Ministry in Irbil?

Did that happen in the last 24 hours? I haven't heard of this. Do you have a link to a report about this?

Here's one:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4788621.html

Crap.

That's bad. Will look into this...

I'm on it: http://www.moderaterisk.net/2007/05/analysis_of_truck_bomb_in_erbi.php

Too bad about Irbil... Seems like the "surge" strategy is having quite opposite of the intended effect. Now places that were once "safe" (is there such a place in Iraq?) are now targeted by the insurgents.

That's to be expected.

Originally, the insurgents targeted American & coalition troops.

The troops learned from the attacks and became more difficult targets.

Then the insurgents targeted Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

Additional troops are being deployed to Baghdad to make targets in Baghdad more difficult to hit.

So now the insurgents are targeting Iraqi civilians outside of Baghdad.

It's not difficult to predict how this is going to turn out.

I agree with most of your comments rosignol except that I don't know about US troops being more difficult targets. April was one of the worst months on record for US troops and "coalition" (read UK) forces.

See casualty data here:
http://icasualties.org/oif/

The US is deploying several thousand additional troops to Baghdad, and is being more aggressive about seeking out and engaging insurgents. An increase in casualties is to be expected in such conditions.

If US (and coalition) troops did nothing but stay inside fortified bases, we could probably reduce casualties to almost zero- but it would completely defeat the purpose of sending troops to Iraq.

rosignol...

Thanks for stating the obvious. My point is that American soldiers are not harder targets than in the past. I don't think there is a "numbers" explanation for the spike in casualties since there have been other times in the war when the US had as many forces but not as many casualties. Maybe they are being more aggressive but I think this also means they are making themselves easier targets not harder targets.

The solution is to get the Iraqis to handle their security by themselves so the US military can get the hell out of Iraq. They have had at least 3 years of training. For god's sake, it doesn't take that long to train a Navy SEAL!