Mandate, My Ass

IRAQ’S rapidly swelling insurgency numbers 200,000 fighters and active supporters and outnumbers the United States-led coalition forces, the head of the country’s intelligence service said yesterday.

The number is far higher than the US military has so far admitted and paints a much grimmer picture of the challenge facing the Iraqi authorities and their British and American backers as elections loom in four weeks.

“I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people,” General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of Iraq’s new intelligence services, said.

Bomb attacks killed another 18 people yesterday, almost all of them members of the security services, and the head of the Baghdad division of the Iraqi National Guard admitted that his paramilitary police force had been infiltrated by people who are leaking information to the guerrillas.

General Shahwani said that there were at least 40,000 hardcore fighters attacking US and Iraqi troops, with the bulk made up of part-time guerrillas and volunteers providing logistical support, information, shelter and money.

“People are fed up after two years without improvement,” he said. “People are fed up with no security, no electricity, people feel they have to do something. The army (dissolved by the American occupation authority) was hundreds of thousands. You’d expect some veterans would join with their relatives, each one has sons and brothers.”

Combine this with our new death-toll and injury numbers, and this is obviously becoming a fiasco of epic proportions. And Dubya still insists there will be elections at the end of January, even though the Iraqi puppe- er, Prime Minister notes that there are serious impediments, and even though the Governor of Baghdad was killed yesterday, and even though more and more Iraqi officials are calling for a delay to make sure the Sunnis are represented, and even though the election workers are terrified to do their jobs, and even though no one's sure it will be safe to go to the polls.

And now we are sending families to Iraq.

This is beginning to look like a good time for some serious protesting, perhaps even calls for impeachment. Oh, there's no chance the Chimp will be impeached by his hired thugs, but at least getting it into the news -- especially at such a politically vulnerable time as right now -- may give some of the more stalwart Dems in Congress something to ponder, and perhaps even to act upon.

I've thrown a few more resource links along the right side -- casualty counts, impeachment sites, contact information for your senators and representatives. Give 'em a shout, and let 'em know that lying to the nation and to the world about the risks posed by a country that was and is no threat, sending our soldiers to illegally invade that country, and keeping them there in spite of rising opposition and continued bloodshed on both sides with no end in sight are acts worthy of the venerable description "high crimes and misdemeanors".

# posted by filkertom : 6:05 PM