Welcome to the Hotel Green Zone
You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave:
… Two U.S. soldiers were killed and 11 wounded in two car bombings on the road leading to the Baghdad International Airport.
In the first attack Saturday afternoon, a suicide bomber drove up beside a convoy near a checkpoint outside the airport and detonated the vehicle, wounding three soldiers, according to Master Sgt. David Larsen of the 1st Cavalry Division.
Another convoy on its way to assist the first was also hit by a car bomb, Larsen said. That attack killed two soldiers and destroyed two Humvees and a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in which some of the troops were riding.
A security alert had been issued before the attacks for travel on the airport road and U.S. Embassy personnel were temporarily prohibited from using it.
It looks like the flypaper strategy has been jujitsu’ed and we’ve become the flies…
Here’s Scott McClellan this past Wednesday:
You know, every step of the way in Iraq there have been pessimists and hand-wringers who said it can’t be done. And every step of the way, the Iraqi leadership and the Iraqi people have proven them wrong because they are determined to have a free and peaceful future.
The American people are such frigging morons that many of them still believe this shit. A
Rasmussen poll this past week found that 45% of Americans thought Iraq would be a success, while only 41% thought it would be a failure. There was an extremely high correlation between how a respondent thought the war would end and who he/she intended to vote for (Success 89% Bush, 7% Kerry; Failure 83% Kerry, 9% Bush).
The moral of the story (at least for the election): we have to get the word out — Iraq is a horrific disaster. Throw out the guy who got us into it.
So…..the warned the embassy personel.
But of course, no one gave a shit about the soldiers.
I don’t think I need to comment further, do I?
“Force Protection” is a political reaction to a lost war. It removes armed forces to bases outside of populated areas, patrols are reduced, and our forces become reactionary. That is, they wait for something to happen and then go out and investigate. It was first used in Vietnam after the 1968 Tet (Mau Than New Year) attacks. It didn’t work in Vietnam, but it did get Nixon elected.
“Force Protection” as a military strategy invites perimeter attacks (they know where we sleep), and it invites attacks on supply lines. Patrols are replaced with aerial bombardment (eg Fallujah) which allows the insurgency to grow (we end up killing their wives, children, and livestock). They can figure out right away what we are doing so they then set off a bomb, our forces go out and investigate, and the trap is set as a planned attack kills our forces.
IN Memory of SP4 David A. Cassidy, KIA 11/22/68, in a perimeter attack during the US application of Force Protection, Bien Hoa, RVN. “Tu Quoc Ghi O’n”, Anh Hai!