Trending Towards Bloody Awful

This Patrick Cockburn article, titled The Deflation of a Superpower, offers a nice summary of what's gone wrong to date in Operation-Why Worry-About-the-Ammo-Dumps?-It's-not-like-They'll-Build-IEDs...um,-Nevermind:

The ferocious resistance encountered last week by the 1,000-strong US marine task force trying to fight its way into villages around the towns of Qaim and Obeidi in western Iraq shows that the war is far from over...

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, the leader of one of the Kurdish parties, confidently told a meeting in Brasilia last week that there is war in only three or four out of 18 Iraqi provinces. Back in Baghdad Mr Talabani, an experienced guerrilla leader, has deployed no fewer than 3,000 Kurdish soldiers or peshmerga around his residence in case of attack. One visitor was amused to hear the newly elected President interrupt his own relentlessly upbeat account of government achievements to snap orders to his aides on the correct positioning of troops and heavy weapons around his house.

There is no doubt that the US has failed to win the war. Much of Iraq is a bloody no man's land. The army has not been able to secure the short highway to the airport, though it is the most important road in the country, linking the US civil headquarters in the Green Zone with its military HQ at Camp Victory.

Cockburn goes on to identify any number of screw ups. On the political level, we've, to use a Bushian phrase, have spent ALL our capital--and we've not even gotten so much as a handful of magic beans. Our ignorance of Iraqi society was and continues to be a major reason for failure.

Groups of local thugs who are otherwise despised for their viciousness are hated less than US forces, thanks to a unique mix of overkill and understaffing. This might work fine for blitzkreig, but it turns into a sour mix when the mundane aspects of occupation become the prime task. Sort of like how Dubya loved wearing a flightsuit--but I doubt you'll ever see him don a janitor's smock.

Neither will you see discipline meted out to folks like Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz, who ignored sound advice prior to combat--and who now simply deny the existence of problems that are shaking the military to the very core.

Finally, Cockburn notes that the latest "New Iraqi Army" is in reality comprised of various ethnic or sectarian militias--just wait until they REALLY have weapons.

Iraq, in his words, is now entirely a no man's land.