Would it be an surging deathrate of American soldiers so long after "Mission Accomplished"?
At least 44 U.S. troops have been killed so far in October. At the current pace, the month would be the deadliest for U.S. forces since January 2005. After falling to 43 in July, the U.S. toll rose in August and September before spiking this month. The war's average monthly U.S. death toll is 64.
The number of U.S. troops wounded in combat also has surged, with September's total of more than 770 the highest since November 2004, when U.S. forces launched a ground offensive to clear insurgents from Falluja.
Or maybe it would be in murdered journalists?
Suspected Shiite militiamen, some dressed as police, broke into a television station and gunned down 11 Iraqi executives, producers and other staffers Thursday — the deadliest attack against the media in this country, where at least 81 other journalists have been killed in the past three years.
The station, Shaabiya, was new and had not started full broadcasting.
Ninety-two (92) dead Iraqi newspeople since our "Mission Accomplished" party. And this batch not even all on-air yet.
Maybe you'd measure it in bodies by the dozen:
Most of the victims found dumped in Baghdad's streets had been shot in the head execution-style and bore signs of torture, typical features of sectarian death squad killings that the Interior Ministry says claim about 50 lives a day. A ministry official had earlier reported the discovery of 60 bodies in the 24 hours leading up to Tuesday morning, but a further 50 were found during the day, officials said.
Ah, that Mission, what was it again? Per David Ignatius:
The situation is deteriorating so fast that even radical militia leaders are said to be complaining about the anarchy. Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite firebrand who heads the militia known as the Mahdi Army, recently told a top official of the Iraqi intelligence service that "an increasing number of Shia death squads, operating under the name of his Mahdi Army, are Iranian pasdaran [Revolutionary Guards] staff officers and Hezbollah fighters, who are executing operational activities that he is not aware of, nor can he control," according to one U.S. source.
I think we can all agree, you're in a real-life horror movie when even Moqtada al-Sadr is worried.
Maybe your Mission ends with you leaving behind some semblance of a democratically elected government, maybe you have to accept de-facto partition, maybe the country you decimated goes through it's little civil war and the government comes out intact. Mission...sort of...oh can't we just leave and call it Accomplished?
Or maybe the government you shed so much blood to establish is overturned before you even leave:
Bush administration officials have been puzzling over why the coup rumors have become so widespread in Baghdad. One reason is that Iraqis remember the country's history of coups, including the 1958 putsch that overthrew the monarchy and the one in 1968 that brought the Baath Party to power.
Or maybe it's just in pure human slaughter:
Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.
The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.
It's hard to take. Although I may write every day against the bloodthirsty criminals, traitors and enablers who allowed us to reach this diminished place in the world, this nadir of moral authority, it's no fun being a citizen of the country responsible for all this human slaughter, with our bombs, guns and what we've triggered in our recklessness.
Now's the time to show we're committed to a new direction, and hope God and the rest of the world eventually forgives us.
There's only one mission that needs to be accomplished over the next twenty-six (26) days.
Your move.
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