IRAQ: The U.S. Surge... More of a Fizzle?

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US: Culture of Unpunished Sexual Assault in Military
By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas, United States - Sexual assault of women serving in the U.S. military, while brought to light in recent reports, has a long tradition in that institution.
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RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: Parliament Tightens Protest Ban at Spy Base
By Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE - Despite ongoing community concerns over the highly secretive Pine Gap spy station in central Australia, the nation’s parliament has moved to effectively ban protest at the joint Australia-United States base.
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US: Counterinsurgency Back In Vogue?
Analysis by Daniel Luban*
WASHINGTON - As the U.S. prepares to reduce its military presence in Iraq while intensifying its war effort in Afghanistan, hawks within both the Republican and Democratic parties have come increasingly to believe that counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine offers a solution to the central security challenges Washington will face in the 21st century.
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POLITICS-US: New Budget, Not Quite a Fundamental Shift
By Daniel Luban and Ali Gharib
WASHINGTON - Secretary of Defence Robert Gates unveiled the U.S.’s much-anticipated new military budget Monday, which aims to reorient the armed forces toward irregular and counterinsurgency warfare while proposing cuts in several major weapons programs.
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Q&A: "Mistakes Will Continue to Happen When There Isn’t Transparency"
Stephen de Tarczynski interviews MAHVISH RUKHSANA KHAN, U.S lawyer
MELBOURNE - Not many people want to spend time at Guantánamo Bay. But while studying law at the University of Miami in 2005, Mahvish Rukhsana Khan became outraged to learn of the lack of rights afforded detainees in the "war on terror" and was keen to get involved.
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IRAQ: U.S. Officials Admit Worry over a ‘Difficult’ al-Maliki
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - U.S. officials privately admit being concerned that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki has become "overconfident" about his government’s ability to manage without U.S. combat troops, according to an Iraq analyst who just returned from a trip to Iraq arranged by U.S. commander General David Petraeus.
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POLITICS-US: One-Fifth of Iraq Funding Paid to Contractors
By William Fisher
NEW YORK - As a new report forecasts that the 190,000 private contractors in Iraq and neighbouring countries will cost U.S. taxpayers more than 100 billion dollars by the end of 2008, an under-the-radar Florida court case suggests that U.S. President George W. Bush - a staunch contractor supporter - is preparing to throw security contractors such as Blackwater under the political bus.
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POLITICS-US: How Tenet Betrayed the CIA on WMD in Iraq
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - Journalist Ron Suskind’s revelation that Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chief was a prewar intelligence source reporting to the British that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) adds yet another dimension to the systematic effort by then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet to quash any evidence - no matter how credible - that conflicted with the George W. Bush administration’s propaganda line that Saddam was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
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POLITICS-US: No Traction in the Middle East
Analysis by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - More than five years after invading Iraq as a first step towards "transforming" the Middle East, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush seems to have lost its footing - let alone its unquestioned domination - throughout the region.
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AFGHANISTAN: Karzai’s Threat Of War Triggers Outrage in Pakistan
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR - Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s threat to send troops across the border to crush pro-Taliban forces, which sparked angry protests in Pakistan’s border areas this week, has led to calls for restraint from moderate politicians in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
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US/IRAQ: Pressure to Cut Costs, Troops Strains "Surge"
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON - Growing impatience in Congress over the enormous costs being racked up by the Iraq war, as well as the Pentagon's belief that it needs more troops in Afghanistan to fight insurgents there, is putting the vaunted success of the George W. Bush administration's "surge" strategy to the test.
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IRAQ: In Tatters Beneath a Surge of Claims
Analysis by Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail*
BAGHDAD - What the U.S. has been calling the success of a "surge", many Iraqis see as evidence of catastrophe. Where U.S. forces point to peace and calm, local Iraqis find an eerie silence.
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US: Overstretched Forces Concern Officers
By Ali Gharib
WASHINGTON - The U.S. military is "severely strained" by two large-scale occupations in the Middle East, other troop deployments, and problems recruiting, according to a new survey of military officers published by Foreign Policy magazine and the centrist think-tank Centre for a New American Strategy.
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Surge [L. surgere, to rise.] v.i. To swell; to flow suddenly or powerfully; to rise and roll, as waves.

George W. Bush's policy of escalating troops in Iraq, announced on Jan. 10, 2007, generated a new vocabulary: surge-heavyweight, escalation, "new way forward", "no middle way"... Is there a post-surge strategy? So far, there is only low morale among the troops and increasing civilian casualties and strife. Extricating the United States from its bloodiest and most costly overseas adventure since the Vietnam War seems an impossible task.