No, There Hasn’t Been a Lull in the War on Terrorism

by James Glaser
November 30, 2004

I heard that today on the radio. They were talking about Iraq and that there hadn't been any big bombings in the last little while and maybe the attack on Fallujah had the desired effect.

I think this "Lull" is a media thing. Somebody at the top wants there to be the appearance of a down turn in the violence so that things start looking up.

The truth is that in any war the violence ebbs and flows, but if you have been watching what is going on in Iraq, the violence there is pretty steady. Yes our casualties go up when we make a major offensive like our attack on Fallujah, but according to our own military there are about 70 attacks on our troops every day. That seems pretty intense to me and I am sure our troops don't feel like there is a lull in the action.

Eight GIs have been killed this weekend alone. Again we don't know how many were wounded or how many lost a limb or limbs, because the Pentagon doesn't think that information would be something of interest to the American people, so they don't report those numbers.

On Sunday, while Iraqi policemen were waiting to get their pay checks in Ramadi, a suicide bomber ploughed into them killing 12. Saturday in the City of Mosul, 17 bodies were found executed and dumped on the streets. That brings to 60 the number found there in the last 10 days. The killed are members of Iraq's Security Force.

Just so we remember that Iraq is just one theater of operation in this war. On the 24th two US Soldiers were killed and one wounded in Afghanistan. We are still trying to find Mulla Omar and Osama bin Laden in that on going war.

Depending on how many Americans are killed in Iraq today, we could set a record for the most killed in any one month. Somewhere around 133 have been killed so far and the deadliest month was the135 killed last April. The American death toll as of Monday is 1251. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have been killed, because we don't count our kills.


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