Footnote to the preceding, Model Cities Div.

From the same AP story that quoted Colonel Brandl:

The deadliest attacks Saturday occurred in Samarra, a city 60 miles north of Baghdad that U.S. and Iraqi commanders have touted as model for pacifying restive Sunni Muslim areas of the country.

Insurgents in Samarra stormed a police station, triggered at least two suicide car bombs and fired mortars at government installations. One of the car bombs, targeting the mayor's office, used a stolen Iraqi police vehicle, the U.S. military said.

Twenty-nine people, including 17 police and 12 Iraqi civilians, were killed throughout the city, the U.S. military said. Arabic language television stations said more than 30 died as gangs of insurgents roamed the city, clashing with American and Iraqi forces.

The dead included the local Iraqi National Guard commander, Abdel Razeq Shaker al-Garmali, hospital officials said. Forty other people, including 17 policemen, were injured, the military said. ...

Samarra, an ancient city of gold-domed mosques that once served as the capital of a Muslim empire extending from Spain to India, was recaptured from Sunni Muslim insurgents in September and was touted as a model for restoring government control to other areas formerly under guerrilla domination.

I'm reminded of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968. Right-wingers like to tout the fact that the offensive was actually a military defeat for the NLF and North Vietnamese because they were ultimately unable to hold on to any objectives (although they did hold one, the city of Hue, for almost a month). Technically, that's true. But it misses the bigger point: What the Tet Offensive demonstrated is that despite the US's repeated assurances that our military had things under control, it didn't. The message, which got across to the American public, was "You may be able to occupy the cities, you may be able to drive us into hiding, you may have the overwhelming edge in firepower, but you can't win. You may hold us at bay for a time, but you can't win."

The same message may be being sent here: "You may be able to patrol the streets, you may be able to press us down for a time, but you can't win - and you can't win because no matter how you phrase it, no matter how you parse it, no matter how you try to coat it or spin it, you are foreign occupiers and will never have the true allegiance of the people."

STDD>HO.