What Have the Kagans Been Wrong About Now?

Today it's the embodiment of Fred's Nina Hartley jowl fetish, Kimberly, doing the wanking. We have no reports on Kim's ability to take it in the face:

Today, Iraq is a different place from what it was six months ago. U.S. and Iraqi forces began their counterinsurgency campaign in Baghdad in February. They moved into the neighborhoods and worked side-by-side with Baghdadis. As a result, sectarian violence is down. The counterinsurgency strategy has dramatically decreased Shiite death squad activity in the capital. Furthermore, U.S. and Iraqi special forces have removed many rogue militia leaders and Iranian advisers from Sadr City and other locations, reducing the power of militias.

As a consequence, execution-style killings, the hallmark of Shiite militias, have fallen to the lowest level in a year; some Iranian- and militia-backed mortar teams firing on the Green Zone have been destroyed.

Yeah, Baghdad's a goddamned paradise, about those mortars:

A mortar and rocket attack on Baghdad's heavily-protected Green Zone has killed three people, Iraqi police said.

Two Iraqis and one Filipino were killed and about 25 people wounded, Iraqi officials said.

Police said up to 30 rockets and mortars were fired into the zone which houses the government and parliament and many foreign embassies.

And they are hardly decreasing:

Now you might say that we can't draw many conclusions from the events of a single day. And, being able to lob mortar shells over a wall doesn't speak to that much organization. But then what about these two nuggets in the LAT story?

1) "There were about 39 attacks [on the Green Zone] in May, compared with 17 in March, according to a U.N. report."

2) "Tuesday's attack came the same day gunmen kidnapped Iraqi Police Col. Mahmoud Muhyi Hussein, who directs security inside the Green Zone . . .

In other words, the security situation in the Green Zone is spiralling down at an alarming pace, and the guerrillas have such good inside knowledge that they can kidnap the very person responsible for security in it, as he drives in Jadiriya. That, my friends, is an inside job. And such an inside job doesn't bode well for future security in the Green Zone. For one thing, presumably they are "debriefing" Col. Hussein as we speak, looking for weak points.

And those sectarian killings...

Following a weekend of unprecedented sectarian violence in Iraq that claimed more than 200 lives, powerful Shiite and Sunni politicians have called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves. The call comes amid a growing sense of insecurity and resentment among common Iraqis with the inability of Iraqi security and the US-led coalition forces to prevent extremist attacks.

The move will be a setback to the Washington administration struggling as it is to bring a sense of normalcy to the war-torn country since its invasion in 2003.

And then there's this, so far today:

July 11 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Iraq at 1230 GMT on Wednesday:

* GARMA - At least seven members of one family were killed when gunmen broke into their house in Garma, west of Baghdad, and planted explosives inside and blew it up, police said.

* SAMARRA - The mayor of Samarra, a mainly Sunni city 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad, was shot dead, police said.

BAGHDAD - Police found 26 bodies in Baghdad on Tuesday. Most had been shot, victims of sectarian death squads.

TIKRIT - U.S. soldiers handed over 12 bodies to the general hospital in Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad on Tuesday, said Iyada al- Jugheifi, head of the hospital's morgue. It was unclear how the people died.

BAGHDAD - At least four policemen were killed and two others wounded when gunmen attacked their patrol in northern Baghdad on Tuesday evening, police said.

ISKANDARIYA - At least two people were killed and 17 wounded when four mortar bombs landed in a residential area in Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad on Tuesday evening, police said.

ISKANDARIYA - Gunmen killed a civil servant when they broke into his home in Iskandariya on Tuesday evening, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen attacked a police commando checkpoint, killing one policeman in the Saidiya district of southern Baghdad on Tuesday, police said. Eight civilians were wounded.

But Kim isn't done lying her non-Nina Harley-esque ass off yet!

The larger aim of the new strategy is creating an opportunity for Iraq's leaders to negotiate a political settlement. These negotiations are underway.

How's that going?

A minister in the Kurdistan Regional Government said Wednesday that essential changes have been made to a draft law, hinting that the Kurds might reject it.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said on July 3, that his Cabinet had unanimously approved the oil draft and that the parliament would begin discussing it the following day. He called the bill "the most important law in Iraq."

But some Kurdish officials have shown reservations, saying that the draft law reduces the region's power.

"I believe that the latest amendments that were done to the draft oil and gas law reduce the powers of the (Kurdish) region and should not be approved," Natural Resource Minister Ashti Hawrami told a joint meeting of the Iraqi and Kurdish regional parliaments in the northern city of Irbil.

Nina Hartley is paid money to have sex with people, Kim Kagan is paid to get people killed.

I'll take the former's morality every time.

UPDATE:

Even more evidence of their being WRONG!

From ABC News:


Al Qaeda's Strength 'Undiminished' in Iraq
Despite U.S. Assertions, Terrorists Thriving in Iraq, Senior Military Official Says

While the military has maintained that al Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, by any number of measures the terror group and its affiliates are as strong as ever, and June was the most violent month since the start of the war, a senior U.S. military official told ABC News.