Putting another bright face on the increase in attacks over the last number of weeks Bush tells us that they are the result of success in Iraq, and that foreign terrorists from Iran and Syria are desperately trying to pull apart coalition progress in their fear of a free and democratic Iraq….. the only problem with his theory is that the attacks don’t have the mark of “desperation” stamped on them, for example the recent attacks on the hotel where American officials live had to take a good deal of planning and coordination.

According to the Toronto Star 67% of Iraqis see the U.S.-led coalition as an army of occupation and only 15% consider them liberators. Those numbers indicate a pretty high number of potentially unhappy local people who (as has been noted previously) probably have guns and an axe to gind over the deaths of relatives at the hands of coalition forces during the attacks or their subsequent treatment.

Coalition forces number something like 150,000, obviously not enough to properly do the job given the recent escalation in attacks, bombings, and deaths. The last U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq did give some small measure of legitimacy to what the United States hopes to accomplish but did not result in any significant bolstering of troop levels from other countries as the Americans had hoped it would… and there just aren’t enough Iraqi people stepping forward to fill the gap.

Money is also becoming a huge factor in all of this and people are noticing, becoming concerned, and asking questions. I know that its been said a thousand times before but Bush and his planners screwed up big time:

• They expected people to meet their occupiers with open arms - it didn’t happen;
• They expected to find vast storehouses full of weapons of mass destruction to justify their actions - it didn’t happen;
• They expected the world to ‘do the right thing’ and rush in to help clean up the mess - it didn’t happen;
• They expected a U.N. resolution after the attacks would help them with money and troops - it didn’t happen;

Security is suffering and a lot of people are dead - a good portion of the blame needs to be placed squarely in front of the people who failed at step one, the planning stage.

(The content of this post came from an older pMachine incarnation of stageleft with a different hosting company - comments, if any, didn’t make it into the rebuild)