Even Worse Than We Think?

Bush says it's just a handful of insurgents causing all the problems in Iraq. US puppet Ayad Allawi says they are pouring in over the borders but that there are only a few pockets of resistance. Which one is correct? Perhaps neither.

It may be worse than either of them is willing to admit:

During the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants.

The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from Nineveh and Salahuddin provinces in the northwest to Babylon and Diyala in the center and Basra in the south, a more widespread resistance than the isolated pockets of insurgency described by Iraqi government officials.

I know that comparing our current quagmire with the one in Southeast Asia is very unpopular among those on the right, but tell me, don't these words sound eerily familiar?

But most of all, military officers argue that despite the rise in bloody attacks over the past 30 days, the insurgents have yet to win a single battle.

"We have had zero tactical losses; we have lost no battles," said a senior U.S. military officer.

"We are at a very critical time," he added. "The only way we can lose this battle is if the American people decide we don't want to fight anymore."