Quagmire News

Useful reality check from the new US commander in Iraq. Quick summary: we’re in a guerrilla war (aka quagmire) here, folks. Longer version from the NYT reads as follows:

“American troops in Iraq are under attack from “a classical guerrilla-type campaign” whose fighters, drawn from Saddam Hussein’s most unyielding loyalists and foreign terrorist groups, are increasingly organized, the new commander of allied forces in Iraq said today.

The commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, pledged that the United States and its allies would not be driven from Iraq by the guerrilla attacks, which today killed one American soldier and wounded at least six others around Baghdad. But he cautioned that pacifying Iraq might require fresh American troops to spend yearlong tours there, double the normal duration of Army forces on peacekeeping duty.

The assessment of Iraqi resistance by General Abizaid was a significant change from previous comments by senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has said that the insurgents’ raids were too haphazard to qualify as a guerrilla war or organized resistance.”