Haven't I heard this somewhere before?
BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces are making inroads into insurgent groups, although attacks may well increase before December's planned election, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a German magazine.
"The pressure applied on terrorists and insurgents is having an effect," Rumsfeld said in an interview in Der Spiegel magazine released on Sunday.
"We are capturing and killing large numbers of high-ranking people from groups like those of al Qaeda and Zarqawi," Rumsfeld said in comments translated into German.
Rumsfeld said he and others had believed violence would peak before the referendum on the Iraqi constitution on October 15, but he said that had not been the case.
"There can of course be a rise of attacks before the December election," Rumsfeld said.
He said an increasing number of Iraqis were providing anonymous tip-offs by telephone about insurgent activities.
The insurgency in Iraq has shown no signs of waning, despite a series of U.S. offensives in rebel strongholds. This month the U.S. military death toll in Iraq passed the 2,000 mark.
Rumsfeld said it was hard to say whether the "war on terrorism" was being won.
"But there are many very good signs and one of them is the enormous number of high-ranking terrorists whose trail we are following," he said.
That story was followed by this- totally contradicting what Rummy says. But that is nothing new.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon has estimated that nearly 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded in attacks by insurgents since January 2004, with the daily number increasing fairly steadily.
A Pentagon report to Congress said casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces rose from about 26 a day between January 1 and March 31, 2004, to about 64 a day between August 29 and September 16, 2005, just before the referendum on the Iraqi constitution.
The Pentagon has not previously provided such a comprehensive estimate of the Iraqi casualty toll from insurgent attacks. It also refuses to release data on the number of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded by U.S. forces.
The U.S. military death toll reached 2,000 last week, and more than 15,000 troops have been wounded since the March 2003 start of the war.
Actually, we are now at 2015, with 8 coming since last Thursday. There are more troops on the ground than ever before.
I don't see an easy answer to this one. We are damned if we leave and damned if we stay. Thanks George.