One year ago this week, Dick Cheney said the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes."
How's that assessment working out?
Well, this little nugget was buried deep in a New York Times story today, on page 12:
"In other news, Reuters quoted the Pentagon's quarterly report to Congress on Tuesday as saying that the strength of insurgents 'will likely remain steady throughout 2006'..."
The Pentagon obviously deemed that to be a wise prediction, given the fact that, between Feb. 11 and May 13, the average number of weekly attacks by insurgents (600) was up by 13 percent over the previous six-month period; and that Sunni insurgents have been joining forces with other anti-American bands, thereby "increasing the terrorists' attack options."
But the report wasn't all gloomy. It merely said that the light at the end of the tunnel has receded just a tad: "(The insurgents') appeal and motivation will begin to wane in early 2007."
So, as they used to say in Brooklyn, wait til next year.
By the way, the new Bush domestic policy advisor, Karl Zinsmeister, whom I have mentioned several times, weighed in three years ago with a conservative magazine article about the war correspondents who were working in Iraq: "Alas, many of the journalists observable in this war theater are bursting with knee-jerk suspicions and antagonisms for the warriors all around them. A significant number are whiny and appallingly soft....I almost wished there would be a very loud explosion very nearby just to shut up their rattling."
Karl: Be careful what you "almost" wish for. Those insurgents scheduled for '07 last throes might take out some of those whiners who venture into war zones without any weaponry....Wait, they already have. Get well, Kimberly.
About Me
- Dick Polman
- Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. This online column is cited by The Washington Post as one of the top five mainstream political blogs in the country, and is touted by former "Hardball" TV producer Howard Mortman as "the immediately must-read political blog." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns. In his 22 years at the Inquirer, he has also been a foreign correspondent based in London; a baseball writer covering the Philadelphia Phillies; a general-assignment writer in the feature section; and a longtime Sunday magazine contributor. In the early '80s, he wrote three metro columns a week for the Hartford Courant. A graduate of George Washington University, today Dick is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence."