The families and loved ones of police recruits in Hillah murdered by a terrorist bombing will mourn over the senseless deaths, but the attack will bring little else for the enemy. Attacking Iraq's police forces, specifically the targeting of prospective recruits lined up in front of stations, has been one of the terrorists' weakest tactics over the past two years. After every bombing, equal or greater numbers of Iraqis have shown up elsewhere to take part in their new state. On the street, police have occasionally been outgunned and their failures have received prominence in mainstream media reports — though their impressive victories, especially those of late in Mosul, have not.
Proper Use of Terrorist Explosives, Part II: Iraqi National Guardsmen caught a saboteur with his pants down, and the improvised explosive device the terrorist was trying to lay went off. Perhaps inflamed by the untimely disintegration of a fellow, a handful of terrorists engaged the Guardsmen, only to be routed.
While the 1st Cavalry Division wiped out a series of thugs' dens in Latifiyah, the 1st Marine Division rounded up over a dozen of the enemy and detonated their hoard of Saddamite arms.
With few exceptions, the enemy is only able to cause destruction and the loss of life among the unarmed, the defenseless and the isolated. As I noted nearly a month ago, the Ba'athist-Islamist combine is struggling towards an objective made difficult last April with Iraqis rallying against terrorists and impossible in November with President Bush's reelection. America is particularly adamantine; one almost wonders if in their ignorance, terrorists thought they were dealing with a parliamentary democracy that might succumb to a ruling coalition's vote of no confidence. In Iraq, what acts of terror make for disturbing press headlines and furrowed brows on a few bureaucrats tempted to surrender Iraqi elections to authoritarians do nothing to affect the larger part of the country.
If ninety percent of Shiites and Kurds, who together represent eighty percent of Iraq's population, intend to vote, the country's turnout will rival that of the most active Western nations. It has become common to hear Iraqis, particularly those wounded in attacks, defiant of the terrorists trying to enslave them. If Sunnis are reasonably spoken for by this man, the Near East authoritarians' defeat in Iraq is complete, elections on the 30th just a reminder of the ineffaceable.