This morning I fired off a quick email to my friend fester about insurgent attacks on roads and bridges, which he has expanded into an important post. The key point is that cutting our transportation options makes it much harder for US forces to move around Iraq freely while expanding the ability of insurgents to plan ambushes. As difficult a job as our troops have today, every blown bridge magnifies the difficulty by making it easier for insurgents to predict where convoys will drive while cutting our ability to respond to emergencies. We really, really do not want to end up defending the one good bridge left between Kuwait and our forward operating bases.
Also read Larry Johnson at Kos, who has more or less the same concern.
Zombie Santa Claus
Well, at least we’ve finally turned a corner.
ThymeZone
When there aren’t any bridges left, and the bridge attacks aren’t happening much, they’ll tell us that we are making progress in Iraq.
It’s all part of the new plan for victory. You naysayers and defeatists should get on board with the plan.
Zombie Santa Claus
It’s also much easier to stay the course when you remain motionless inside your base, awaiting resupply by air.
Why don’t we ever hear the good news about Iraq? With all these bridges destroyed, Iraqi citizens won’t have to pay as much for highway taxes. The invisible hand of the market will repair the road and bridges, and taxes will remain nonexistent throughout vast swaths of the nation. Iraq is the perfect free market economy, which means it has nowhere to go but up!
Bubblegum Tate
Exactly. Only an America-hating Islamonazigayfacist would think that a 100 percent reduction in the number of bridges being blown up represents anything other than glorious, glorious victory.
Wilfred
Arabs can’t swim, because they come from the desert. Without bridges, they can’t follow us home, obviously.
whatsleft
The fact that the terrorists are blowing up bridges shows how desperate they are getting. The surge is working! When and if bridge-blowing slows down that will show… The surge is working!
And don’t forget, as they change tactics and strategeries, so do we. So…The surge is working!
Zifnab
All your corners are belong to us.
28 Percent
All you LIEberals do is complain about the bad news that there are a few less bridges but I do not see you tellng the GOOD NEWS like how manye of the bridges we are controlling and how many we have captured from the BAD GUYS who took them from us (maybe you have forgotten about them) and how many have new paint I’ll bet it is a lot but who knows? The BDS media will not say. But you endanger our troopds by telling the ENEMY that destroying bridges gives them an advantage well how do you know the advantage does not work both ways huh? Now more bridges will be destroyed but if you had not said anything the President’s enemies might have forgotten about this danger and the terrorists might have forgotten about it to.
Jake
And look. When everyone is squeezing onto one or two roads to get in and out of Baghdad it will be easier to make sure no bad guys get in the Green Zone.
I read that some America haters are worried the terrists will concentrate their activities on those roads. But they miss the beauty of this new set up. (Which is really President Bush’s idea. If it works.) First, the more targets they have, the sooner they’ll run out of bullets and explosives. Second, while they’re shooting at the civilians in a few spots, the ponies of democracy and freedom can graze the green fields of liberty that will spring up in the rest of Iraq. Finally, I read that the terrists are trying to cut people off from the government and make them think they can’t rely on the government.
Duh!
The Administration has been saying that since a little while after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. People can’t rely on the government. People shouldn’t rely on the government. So this latest last throe will make the Iraqis more self-reliant, more American.
Heh.
RSA
Do you think it would help if we started building bridges over schools, or building schools under bridges? It would give more work to painters, at least.
The Other Steve
If they hadn’t blown up the bridges, we would have had to send in F-117 strike fighters with super stealth technology laden with super smart bridge blowing bombs to blow up the bridges.
Think of how expensive that would be!
They’re doing us a favor, frankly. Once again you moonbats try to spin the good news as bad.
Dreggas
They were just bridges over troubled waters, only a comma really.
The Other Steve
Since there is no Open Thread, I’m spewing on this one.
It appears the right wing noise machine has decided to take on the big mean Al Roker. Apparently Al Roker was insensitive to artists, when he commented that the British Olympic ad flashed so much it might give you a seizure. In fact he was so insensitive, he was as bad as Don Imus, and there is OUTRAGE! OUTRAGE I TELL YOU! that the people who went after Imus aren’t showing equal OUTRAGE!
In an unrelated story… The British Olympic committee removed the footage for fear that it might give people seizures.
Next up, right wing defends Japanese Anime against the epileptic agenda..
Wilfred
We’ll jump off that bridge when we get to.
srv
If the US Military can do one thing, it’s logistics and protecting the long tail. Remember how the road from Kuwait was just indefensable? Well, it’s been open for a long time, and you haven’t been hearing about it. Convoys all day, all the time.
And that’s the reason the Iraqi Army will never survive alone. They have no infrastructure and the ability to defend that infrastructure that I can divine. No trucks, no tanks, no helicopters, no AC-130s, no Predators.
They’re completely and utterly dependent on us. They literally can’t wipe there asses w/o us being invovled.
Wilfred
We will hand down when they are ready to hand up.
Zifnab
Yes, that will go over really well, not more than a year after Rush Limbaugh did the epilespy boogey while calling Michael J. Fox a faker. I’m sure the right wing will bend the ear of the nation when they start complaining about this en masse.
Dreggas
DOT Used as Lobbying Arm for the Auto-Industry
I should be suprised but this is so…textbook these days.
mrmobi
All hail 28 Percent, inheritor to the throne of BIRDZILLA! This is just stunning, 28. Really, good job.
If we all just keep very very very quiet, the terrorists will forget about us. Another little known fact about Demislamunofascists, they have no attention span. If we could just close all the newspapers and magazines and the intertubes, we could win!
You have re-defined spoof, 28.
Tsulagi
Not sure these bridge bombings are part of some coordinated strategy directed against us. I think we’re seen as just an annoyance in the continuing civil war with the end game being consolidating turf and power inside Iraq by players there.
These bridges have meant something more to the locals than just logistics. From some posts by Iraqi bloggers, Iraqi Konfused Kid wrote of the Sarafiya bridge…
How long will those neighborhoods now remain mixed?
We’re not affecting the outcome of this civil war, just slowing it down a little by being targets of opportunity when driving around. Other than AQ and some Iraqis we’re propping up, most would like to see us leave. Even their parliament passed a resolution calling for a US troop withdrawal timetable. The administration set the table for this FUBAR, and it’s taken on a zombie life of its own. We won’t change the outcome, we’re not that important there anymore.
But to protect GWB’s vanity and that of the fighting 28%er Short Bus Brigades, we will continue to bleed. They don’t make mistakes. Jesus told them so.
Jake
[scoff] Another America Hater. Sex offenders go under the bridges. That’s the American way. You want to stick a school near a bunch of pervs? Sheesh.
The schools can go near the oil refineries to remind the children what their American Friends are fighting for.
ThymeZone
I’m just glad we can give them a hand.
jo6pac
If you look back a few months before this new idea of how to control the country, everyone with some knowledge of warfare said this was what going to happen. It’s amazing to me and sad that we can’t learn from history. America’s Warriors and Iraqi people will be the ones to pay the price of just plan stupid people in charge.
jo6pac
NCBrian
I think Steve Gilliard wrote about this extensively for years as one of the key ways that the insurgents will force out the US military.
scarshapedstar
Nonsense. Victor Davis Hanson said it was gonna be Thermopylae II, and you can’t argue with that dude. And I remember Bill Whittle wrote a stirring essay about how Iraq is like the Civil War except the sides are the manly Grays and the Pink faggots who can’t do math. You can’t get much more knowledgeable than that. Not to mention all those emails sourced to 8 or 10 different nonexistent soldiers about how we’re totally kicking terrorist ass no matter what the LLL says.
RLaing
Well, between ‘terrorists’ bombing bridges and the USAF bombing railway stations, it is a miracle anyone can go anywhere in Iraq. You know, even the Nazis did not find it necessary to bomb countries after they had occupied them.