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30 May 2006 12:44 pm

The Last Throes

It's now a year since vice-president Dick Cheney recklessly insisted that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes." Money quote:

"The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

Greg Djerejian does the math and finds the opposite to be the case. If you also take into acount that the U.S. military has essentially withdrawn from large areas of Iraq, now controlled by Jihadists and insurgents or name-less face-less sectarian militias, you could easily argue that the insurgency, combined with Shiite death squads, has never been as strong. Baghdad remains unsecured, over three years after the invasion. Ramadi is controlled by al Qaeda, something that was not the case before the U.S. invasion. Again, you can debate whether Cheney knowingly lied or whether once again, he simply had no idea what he was talking about. But neither option is very reassuring.

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