Word: troop
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...analogy that springs to Iraqi minds is the Israeli barrier in the West Bank - justified as a security measure but viewed by Iraqis and other Arabs as a permanent seizure of territory. As the Shi'ite advance in Baghdad continues - slowed substantially but not halted by the American troop surge - the walled-away Sunni neighborhoods could just as well become U.S.-protected bastions, carved out of what, in Shi'a eyes, should be Shi'ite territory...
...McCain was hard on the opponents of the war here at home. He didn't just describe troop withdrawal proposals as unwise. He derided "the fanciful and self-interested debates about Iraq that substitute for statesmanship in Washington." And he suggested that the Democrats had decided "to take advantage of the public's frustration, accept defeat," and hope that "the politics of defeat" would benefit them...
...Senate. Right now the Senate Democrats are stuck at 51 in favor of their version of the $100 billion supplemental appropriation to pay for the war through Sept. 30. It's a version that posits March 2008 as a goal-not a deadline, just a goal-for troop withdrawal. The irony here is that Bush could sign this bill because it gives him implicit authority to revise the withdrawal date toward perpetuity. Signing the bill would not only avoid a damaging political confrontation at home but also please the vast majority of Iraqis, who, according to the polls, want...
Wednesday's bloodbath in Baghdad is a stark reminder that while the U.S. troop surge into the capital has brought a significant decline in sectarian killings by Shi'ite death squads, the Sunni insurgency and its terror attacks on Shi'ite civilians have continued to take a dreadful toll. More than 150 people were killed Wednesday as explosion after explosion rocked Shi'ite neighborhoods: The attacks left more than 100 workers dead in a Shi'ite neighborhood food market; more than 40 dead at a police checkpoint; and 11 killed in front of a hospital...
...Mahdi Army is also able to use its political clout to insulate it from the worst effects of the troop surge, by pressuring the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to limit how and where American troops operate in Shi'ite areas. When they feel the heat from the Americans, they are able to make life difficult for al-Maliki by precipitating political crises - as they did this week by announcing the withdrawal of their ministers from his cabinet in protest at his failure to demand a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq...