Iraq: There are now an average of 130 attacks a day on coalition forces

[bpilgrim]

http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/international.cfm?id=1317722003

Yet despite the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, a huge amount of US military assets have been shifted to Iraq. The Germans now make up the biggest part of the coalition forces along with various other European contingents. Washington fears they will not stay for long when casualties start to mount. "The prognosis for Afghanistan is miserable," was how one US intelligence source concluded his briefing.

It is not much better for Iraq. There are now an average of 130 attacks a day on coalition (mainly American) forces; almost 100 coalition troops have been killed in November, the grimmest month so far. "We only have a third of the forces we need to fight the insurgents," one former US diplomat told me. The intelligence is threadbare too: US commanders have no real idea who they are up against, except that they are well-organised remnants of Saddam’s Ba’athist regime, supplemented with some al-Qaeda-type Islamo-fascists. "We still don’t really know who is behind the attacks," I was told. "So we just go around kicking doors in - which is exactly what the enemy wants us to do."

more...
http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/international.cfm?id=1317722003

i thought the military just said things are getting better in iraq :crazy:

peace

[maddezmom]

1. is this a typo?

Inside story of how Washington is losing its bottle

[bpilgrim]

2. that's what i thought

maybe it's an inside 'joke' :shrug:

peace

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. probably a typo

from a news link from today on the same (scotsman.com) site:

Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez said on Saturday that attacks on US-led forces have dropped some 30% in the past two weeks, from a daily average of 35 to 22. On the worst days earlier this month, there were as many as 50 attacks a day, Sanchez told a news conference in Baghdad.

http://www.news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2241238

Those are the figures reported everywhere else. Unless Neil has an inside source (all the figures are going to have to come from the Pentagon), and he doesn't claim one, we might as well go with the ones used by the vast majority of the media.

On edit: I thought you meant the '130' was a typo - which I think it is.

'Bottle' is British slang for 'nerve' or 'guts'. The best definition I heard for it is 'valour minus discretion'.

[maddezmom]

5. thanks for the explanation

thought it might have been in reference to something else.

[DUreader]

7. Maybe they are counting attacks on Iraqi members of the coalition

Something the US conveniently does not count

[bpilgrim]

9. they also have it in a callout box

the 120 figure. :shrug:

peace

[izzie]

3. This is not what the TV is drumming into my Leftist head.

Please is this really right? I read Baghdad Burning and those blogs and it seems to be going on all the time.

[KG]

6. what did the morons in charge of this clusterfuckexpect?

instead of using them to help maintain order and to keep an eye on them, the idiots disbandeded a reasonable well trained army, left them without work and with access to plenty of ordenance.

the iraqi resistance doesn't need to help of foreign insurgents, there's 100,000+ pissed-off ex-soldiers with plenty of ammo and the know-how to use it.

[0007]

8. We're losing faster than the dollar can gain....

Soon Iraq will be just like Afghanistan, 'eh?

"The reality is grim. The Taliban is resurgent; al-Qaeda is there too, but not as relevant as it was. Attacks on aid workers are soaring; many are refusing to leave the urban areas. The warlords are back in control of the countryside, where opium production is already above pre-invasion levels. "Afghanistan is a narco-economy once more," said one intelligence analyst......

One day we hear al Qaeda isn't in Iraq and not involved and the next we do, so what is indeed true?

[bpilgrim]

10. i can't tell whats true and what isn't

i'd still like to know if that 130 number is a typo or what :shrug:

peace