[oceanview]

the bulk of them have "gone down", what you are seeing now are holdouts, or just a band of street thugs who the media is labeling as an "army" as part of their spin to turn every incident into a defeat for the US.

Of course, losing 4 soldiers is a tragedy - but its not disneyland over there.

[pickemuphere]

the bulk of them have "gone down", what you are seeing now are holdouts, or just a band of street thugs who the media is labeling as an "army" as part of their spin to turn every incident into a defeat for the US.

We've been hearing that for over a year now. You need some new material.

[No Blue States]

Its a matter of time for Sadr no doubt, even though he has survived longer than I ever thought he would. But his days are numbered.

[defenderSD]

There's no question we need to keep our troops in Iraq to prevent a power grab by insurgents or a civil war. But we really should stop patrolling the streets in lightly armored vechicles. Unless our men are going out to attack some insurgents in humvees, they shouldn't be driving around in such lightly armored vehicles. Instead, just pay some Iraqis to tell us what's happening on the streets and install a bunch of surveillance cameras to watch the bad neighborhoods. Our men are driving around out there in humvees with targets on their backs. It just ain't right.

Although we're shipping armored humvees to Iraq as fast as possible, that isn't going to solve the problem because the insurgents are smart enough to just attack the unarmored humvees. Until every unarmored vechicle is replaced in Iraq, they're just going to attack to choose the vulnerable vehicles and troops for attack. We should not be out there just patrolling like the NYPD in sqad cars. It's too dangerous and it's not that critical of a mission. Instead, gather intelligence with more clandestine operations and keep our uniformed soldiers ready to respond to major insurgent attacks. This patrolling is not necessary and it's getting our men killed for no good reason. There has to be a better way to improve security in Iraq.