Grasping at Straws

Rummy's getting desperate:

Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that setting a timeline for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq would give a "lifeline for terrorists." And in a spirited defense of the war, he invoked Abraham Lincoln and the American revolution...

"It would throw a lifeline to terrorists who in recent months have suffered significant losses and casualties, been denied havens and suffered weakened popular support," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "Timing in war is never predictable. There are no guarantees. And any who say we've lost this war or that we're losing this war are wrong. We are not."...

Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the United States Central Command, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who is in charge of multinational forces in Iraq, and Mr. Rumsfeld declined to endorse the position of Vice President Dick Cheney, who said recently that the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes."

"Those words, though, I didn't use them, and I might not use them," said Mr. Rumsfeld, who did allow that insurgents might believe they are in their last throes.

Responding to questions from Sen. Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, General Abizaid said he would not criticize the vice president, but added, "there's a lot of work to be done against the insurgency."

Do the insurgents believe they "are in their last throes?

Four car bombs that exploded within about 10 minutes of each other in Baghdad early today killed at least 17 people and wounded 68 others, an Interior Ministry official said. They were the second wave of near-simultaneous bombings in the capital in about 12 hours, bringing the death toll in that period to 35...

They followed the apparently coordinated explosions on Wednesday evening of three car bombs less than a half mile apart in a mainly Shiite suburb of Baghdad that killed at least 18 people and wounded 46 others, according to an Interior Ministry official.

Later in Baghdad, a sniper shot and killed two soldiers who were protecting a strategic intersection in the western district of Amiriya, an Interior Ministry official said.

North of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded today near an American convoy in Al Tuz, about 70 miles south of Kirkuk, killing three Iraqis and wounding eight, said Maj. Safaa Mawlood of the Third Regiment of the Iraqi Army. He added that four of the wounded were in serious condition and that the blast damaged an American Humvee.