Cons and Casualties

November is over, and another 133 Americans are dead in Iraq. This number will probably increase in the next three or four days because of delays in Defense Department reporting. This means that November has seen the continuance of a somewhat troubling trend. With the exception of March, every month in 2004 has seen higher American casualties than the corresponding month in 2003. Check itout. There’s not really much reason to believe that this trend will change anytime soon; I expect it will continue until at least March 2005. Of course, we’ve “broken the back” of the insurgency with the assault on Falluja, but we also broke the back of the insurgency when we captured Saddam Hussein, and when we turned over power to the Allawi government.

Any commentary about this from the usual suspects on the conservative side of the blogosphere? Not really. Belmont Club is trying to entertain itself by attacking the oil-for-food program, as if it really makes any difference right now. I suppose that they would like to contend that the oil-for-food program supplied money to Hussein so that he could fund the insurgency, and thus is responsible for the current problems, but I don’t think any of them are actually stupid enough to make that argument explicit. Chrenkoff is spending his time musing about the blogosphere and about how much he likes being an Australian. Bird Dog at Tacitus divides his time between attacking the CIA, attacking the UN, and discussing options for attacking Iran; I wonder which is really the biggest threat. More on the last a bit later.

The only one I can find this morning still optimistic about Iraq is good old Bill Safire, who seems to think that the victories of John Howard, Hamid Karzai, and George Bush herald the march of freedom in the Middle East. He also seems to believe that the January 30 elections will come off without a hitch. Perhaps he hasn’t received the memo; the only reason we’re actually going to move forward with the elections is to forestall a rebellion among the Shia, and it won’t make a damn bit of difference for the Sunni insurgency. But then, I suppose that Bill will have moved on to greener pastures before the next giant pile of shit hits the fan.