Iraq News (3 April)

The Good: Now that some of the dust has settled from the hell that broke loose last week, coalition and Iraqi security forces are conducting humanitarian ops throughout areas where the violence erupted. A good plan to ensure violence doesn't re-emerge in our faces again. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mullen, says US troop reductions (to ~140,000) are still on track.

The Bad: Suicide bomber kills 7 last night near Mosul. Mosul is considered to be the last urban bastion of Al-Qaeda, but the huge mix of various tribes and sects in Iraq's third largest city will make defeating the enemy take some time. Some of the Iraqi Security Forces were "not up to the task" of following orders in light of the recent Basra offensive and showed their militia allegiance. This has been a significant problem for the Iraqi security forces for as far back as I can remember.

The Ugly: You can read the WSJ Op-Ed entitled "The Second Iran-Iraq War" from Kim Kagan if you want a healthy dose of disinformation with your morning coffee. She gets the fact that Iran is sending weapons and training into Iraq right, but kind of glosses over the Iraqi government's ties with Iran. And for god sakes Ms. Kagan no one wants another Iran-Iraq war much like no one wants to see trench warfare and mustard gas on the Western Front come back into style. For some insight into the US involvement with the Basra operations, NY Times has a pretty thorough analysis on what GEN Petraeus and AMB Crocker had to say about this whole thing.

Prime Minister Maliki schmoozin' with Basra sheikhs several days too late