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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
No, the coverage of Iraq granted to us by the MSM shows an abject failure. But their cameras and reporters only seem to go to two or three neighborhoods. Funny that.

Actually, the main-stream media has gotten bored lately, and doesn't seem to be reporting on the story as much. But the CSIS work (originally commissioned by the Pentagon) is pretty disturbing:

PICK YOUR LEBANON. I've just come back from a joint CSIS/Brookings event titled "Has Iraq Reached A Turning Point?" The answer is "no." Somewhat absurdly in light of the findings being presented, they meant "turning point" as "turning point for the better." The audience, after hearing the opening remarks (which basically summarized the findings in this PDF file), wanted to know if we'd reached a bad tipping point. With that question on the table the three technocrats on our panel -- Michael O'Hanlon from Brookings, and Bathsheba Crocker and Frederick Barton of the CSIS Postconflict Reconstruction Project -- suddenly seemed to lose faith in the concept of tipping points. All hope is not lost, they assured us, though there's a need to "manage expectations" in light of the negative turn of the past six months.
O'Hanlon described his new best-case scenario thusly: "It would be success to simply not let things get worse, and to simply train Iraqi security forces so that they can take it over in two or three years." Iraqi forces wouldn't be taking over a liberal democracy after that two or three years of continued American warfare. They wouldn't even be taking over an especially stable country. Instead he "hopes we can put this on a trajectory like Lebanon," except without the long years of civil war that proceeded the current state of affairs in that country. In other words, "if we can keep it as one of the two or three most violent places in the Middle East but at least on a long-term trajectory toward stability, that's acceptable."

To even meet this not-very-auspicious goal a lot of things need to happen that I don't particularly expect to see. O'Hanlon thinks we need to make sure elections go forward with some semblance of normalcy even in the Sunni Triangle. I just don't see how that can be achieved, and I don't think that even the elections elsewhere will live up to expectations. You hear a lot of things like "of course it won't be Switzerland," and of course it won't. But it's also not going to be up to the standard of, say, Ukraine or even Tajikistan. Switzerland is a red herring. He also thinks we need to disclaim any interest in a long-term military presence in Iraq or in control of Iraqi oil by U.S. companies. Call me crazy, but I don't think it's some kind of oversight on the part of the Bush administration that's prevented them from taking those steps. They haven't disclaimed an interest in those things because they are interested in them.

At any rate, that's the best case. The worst case, as everyone's been saying for a while, is a Lebanon-style civil war except in a bigger country with more oil adjacent to a hostile Iran that's rapidly moving toward possession of nuclear weapons. These are not, I remind you, highly partisan left-wingers or peaceniks. O'Hanlon supported the war, and the CSIS PRC team first got involved in Iraq at the request of the Pentagon, so they were regarded as a highly credible source of information until their information started being something the administration didn't want to hear.

Yglesias at TAPPED

The most disturbing thing I've seen recently, though, is this bit that Andrew Sullivan quoted from a Newsweek piece:

• The Defense Department counted 87 attacks per day on U.S. forces in August — the worst monthly average since Bush's flight-suited visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003. Preliminary analysis of the July and August numbers also suggests that U.S. troops are being attacked across a wider area of Iraq than ever before. And the number of gunshot casualties apparently took a huge jump in August. Until then, explosive devices and shrapnel were the primary cause of combat injuries, typical of a "phase two" insurgency, where sudden ambushes are the rule. (Phase one is the recruitment phase, with most actions confined to sabotage. That's how things started in Iraq.) Bullet wounds would mean the insurgents are standing and fighting—a step up to phase three.

Not just a few neighborhoods -- "a wider area of Iraq than ever before." And the shift to gunshot wounds? Not. Good.