A Tough Month

Today is the last day of May. It has gotten hot in Iraq and it's been a very difficult month for civilians and soldiers alike. In is very hard to get a firm figure for the civilian deaths, but there have been hundreds this month. As far as soldiers, we have lost 119 in May. The third deadliest month since the war began in March 2003. The president and the generals will tell you that this is not a surprise. The up-tick in American deaths was expected, because our new tactics are riskier. No longer are we relying on fighting the enemy from spralling bases like Anaconda. Now we are sending smaller, more agile company-size or less units into the "belly of the beast". We are trying hard to win, not just by fire-power, but through doing the one thing we should have done better in the beginning....by winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. This is counter-insurgency 101. We need to provide them the basics... security, food, water, electricity. In return for that.....they will provide us with information. Who are the terrorists...who are insurgents...who are the enemy? Who's laying IEDs, who's recruiting suicide bombers, who's blowing up buses in Baghdad? But to be successful at this strategy, we have to get closer to the people. We have to be more vunerable. We have to except more risks and more death. President Bush recently said he knows that August will be a very bad time. He expects more death. But this is the price of war, he says..and the price that we have to pay to win in Iraq. To defeat terrorism. So as tough as May has been...my guess is...it is only the beginning of a long, hot, summer of death in the desert.