[Skybird]

The foreign insurgents, terrorists in this case, have shown no real interest since over 18 months to hit the US troops as their primary target. Their goal was sowing civil unrest, hinder the government to settle down, sow hate between Shias and sunni, and prepare the field for civil war. One year ago Konovalov and me had an argu7ment oin the question if the situation in Iraq back then alraedy was civil war. He said no, I argued that it is a preparatory phase directly leading into civil war and thus I tend to see it as part of civil war. In this regards the foreign insurgents had been successful, and the Us troops failed.

The internal insurgents are Sunni sympathizers of the old regime, and organized crime, and lastly extremists fighting for the dominance of their confessions, and here, on the Shia side, the internal insurgents again mix up with foreigners, from Iran for example. While gangsters have no idealistic goals and do kidnapping for reasons of money only, the religious "fighters" more and more are deathlocked in a.) a quest for power and dominance, and b.) taking revenge for the strikes of the other site. Both reasons are increased by the hate that had been sown between both groups by too much bloodshed. Neither Iraqi troops nor US troops have stopped the organized crime, are able to provide protection from that, or are capable to provide a minimum of stability and security so that any government could settle down and start to adress things. Not to mention that the government is deeply devided in itself and often blocks itself, and is not trusted by it's own people. And every day new assaults on the oil infrastructure costs the country billions of dollars.

there had been repeated "offensives", "brakethroughs", "decisive steps" and "hopes" after elections or constitutional assemblies that were used by defenders of the war to claim that "now", "finally", "as predicted", "without doubt", success is near. And all of these statements have shown no substance at all. Unfortunately i cannot see anything in Iraq making me think different than that this time it will be any different with this latest in a longer seqeunce of "optimistic" announcements. Just another desparate and helpless appeal to hold out and support the war, not more and not less it is. The country in in a worse situation than ever before. Claiming that there is "progress" illustrates only how big the derealization in the mind of the speaker is.