Situation Called Dire in West Iraq

Anbar province in Iraq. WaPost graphic

I found this off The Washington Post:

The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents.

The officials described Col. Pete Devlin's classified assessment of the dire state of Anbar as the first time that a senior U.S. military officer has filed so negative a report from Iraq.

One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost."

We have been defeated politically! Do you understand what that means? It means we have lost whatever support the Iraqi people had for the U.S. occupation troops. This is no longer a war between U.S. troops and some foreign terrorists--this is a war between U.S. troops and the Iraqi civilian population in Anbar. And if the situation is so dire in Anbar, then how bad do you think it is in the rest of Iraq? Continuing with the Post story:

Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report. Another person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar.

When Saddam Hussein was still in power, al Qaeda did not have a political presence in Iraq. The last thing Saddam would have wanted is to have a religious, fundamentalist terrorist group operating in Iraq--especially since Iraq is divided into three ethnic and religious groups. If al Qaeda was in Iraq, they could have destabilized Saddam's regime. The United States brought al Qaeda into Iraq with its invasion and toppling of Saddam. And now al Qaeda has become the most significant political force in Anbar.

There is just one final little detail of the Post story to share:

Anbar is a key province; it encompasses Ramadi and Fallujah, which with Baghdad pose the greatest challenge U.S. forces have faced in Iraq. It accounts for 30 percent of Iraq's land mass, encompassing the vast area from the capital to the borders of Syria and Jordan, including much of the area that has come to be known as the Sunni Triangle.

The insurgency arguably began there with fighting in Fallujah not long after U.S. troops arrived in April 2003, and fighting has since continued. Thirty-three U.S. military personnel died there in August -- 17 from the Marines, 13 from the Army and three from the Navy.

So do you still think we're winning in Iraq?