If the insurgents follow up with similar attacks like yesterday's attack on the US patrol base in the Diyala Province, the "surge" might fail dramactically.
Is the Surge Backfiring? Quote:
The strike was what U.S. soldiers call a complex attack, one involving elaborate planning to maximize casualties. Initial assessments suggest that first a suicide car bomber rammed a vehicle into the gates of a small U.S. patrol base outside Baquba in the same area where single car bomber attacked a patrol base last month. A second suicide car bomber apparently followed the first in yesterday's attack, however. And at the same time insurgents fired small arms and rocket propelled grenades, according to soldiers from the 82nd Airborne. In the end, the patrol base was all or mostly destroyed, with several soldiers dead beneath the rubble.
At least one other U.S. patrol base remains in the same area of the Diyala River valley as American troops struggle against insurgents who appear to be increasingly bent on turning the territory around Baquba into the most deadly front of the war in Iraq for U.S. forces. It remains to be seen whether the dozens of other combat outposts popping up around Iraq amid the surge will come to face similar attacks aimed at sending U.S. troops back into heavily fortified compounds and, in the hopes of insurgents, ultimately home to the United States in defeat.
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