Throw-Away Lines From Iraq

Why aren't you hearing that the insurgency is splitting? Or that the U.S. casualty rate is down 50% since the beginning of the Surge?

by Rod D. Martin
March 17, 2007

Lots of coverage today about the chlorine-laden bombs terrorists detonated in Iraq. But did you catch this, buried beneath the lede in the AP story?

There is a mounting power struggle between insurgents and the growing number of Sunnis who oppose them in Anbar, the center of the Sunni insurgency, which stretches from Baghdad to the borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Anbar assaults came three days after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, traveled there to reach out to Sunni clan chiefs in a bid to undermine tribal support for the insurgency.

No, I bet you didn't.

Gas attacks will not win al Qaeda or the Saddamites any friends, especially when the gas attacks -- reminiscent of those for which Saddam was just put to death -- are against fellow Sunnis instead of "foreign" Kurds. There's a reason the tide is turning toward freedom.

And yet you aren't hearing about, are you?

You also aren't hearing that the U.S. casualty rate has dropped 50% sin…