The Good: More militants killed in Sadr City. Our forces have been fighting round the clock to get the security barrier in the southern part of the city up, and air strikes against thugs launching mortars and rockets all over Baghdad have been frequent. The superb Long War Journal has some more details on these ops. Boeing is going to sell a bunch of planes to the Iraqi government to upgrade Iraqi Airways to boost commercial flights. A brigade of 3,500 troops is set to withdraw from Iraq without backfill in accordance with the force reduction plan to go back down to 15 Brigade combat teams in Iraq. This will be followed by a 45-day pause, and then there will be more troop reductions from this country (an' shallah).
The Bad: The American Psychiatric Association has stated that the use of female suicide bombers is likely, but it's been pretty apparent that this is already an alarming trend in Iraq. The Diyala Sahwa tribes have said that 6,000 potential suicide bombers have entered Iraq! These guys have been less than scrupulous in what they say to the media, but there may be some element of truth to this.
The Ugly: The Saudis aren't happy about this Disney Land Green Zone proposal where fancy-schmancy hotels are going to go up. This might be the one thing I agree with the Saudi state-run press on, as there should probably be more initiatives to get the basics back online (water, electricity, trash collection, other normal shit we take for granted in the States). Iran has stated that they won't hold more security talks with the U.S., presumably this is in response to US "accusations" that Iran is arming Shi'ite militants. It's pretty obvious what the sheisty Iranians are up to, but cool heads need to prevail in the US and Iraq to deal with this issue, IMHO.
Sufferin' in Sadr City
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