Standing Up and Standing Down: Reality's Day

We will stand down as Iraqi troops and police stand up has been a long time Bush Administration mantra. We have now reached the goal levels of Iraqi troops and police, but as Amy Scott Tyson notes in tomorrow's Washington Post U.S. Casualties in Iraq Rise Sharply.

The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest monthly level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war.

Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The sharp increase in American wounded -- with nearly 300 more in the first week of October -- is a grim measure of the degree to which the U.S. military has been thrust into the lead of the effort to stave off full-scale civil war in Iraq, military officials and experts say. Beyond Baghdad, Marines battling Sunni insurgents in Iraq's western province of Anbar last month also suffered their highest number of wounded in action since late 2004.

Once again, George Bush's insistence on substituting wishful thinking for logic has been exposed by the realities of a harsh world. This collection of dimwits knows nothing and has learned nothing. Once again, this is a catastrophe long predicted. Just as in Vietnam, as General Anthony Zinni predicted, our efforts to turn over responsibility for "our war" to the locals has merely armed local factions against each other.

Thousands of additional U.S. troops have been ordered to Baghdad since July to reinforce Iraqi soldiers and police who failed to halt -- or were in some cases complicit in -- a wave of hundreds of killings of Iraqi civilians by rival Sunni and Shiite groups.

U.S. commanders have appealed for weeks for 3,000 more Iraqi army troops to help secure Baghdad but as of Thursday had received only a few hundred, according to military officials in the Iraqi capital. Mistrust of Iraqi police in Baghdad remains high, Abizaid said. Last week, an Iraqi police brigade with hundreds of officers was removed from duty over its involvement in sectarian killings.

Once again, reality is having its day. Tens of thousands of American soldiers have now paid the price for an Administration too cowardly to admit error or correct its blunders. If Bush and Rumsfeld continue to refuse to budget or plan for the war they have blundered so badly, we can console ourselves that the Republicans do have the upside covered. Our Congress has appropriated a few tens of millions for the victory celebrations. That ought to buy a lot of "Mission Accomplished" banners.