Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Iraq optimism for real this time?

TigerHawk

In all the kerfuffle within Australia about a certain Indian doctor, it may have gone unnoticed that there is some pretty serious revision of prospects of success in Iraq underway in American at the moment. Tigerhawk's post linked to above has extract from a New York Times article by a couple of Brookings Institute analysts who have been there recently. It's interesting reading.

In fact, even within The Guardian there have been a couple of cautiously optimistic reports from within Iraq in the last couple of weeks.

Problem is, car bombs against civilian targets are extremely hard to stop, and while ever you have a couple of them going off and killing scores of Iraqis every week or fortnight, it's hard to convince us in the West that things are improving overall in the country.

Still, it would be rather interesting politically for Australia if, by our Federal election, the belief in progress in Iraq as a result of the surge has actually caught on.

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