Oh Good: An Air War 

Oh Good: An Air War

Is the U.S. going to combine:
1. Withdrawal with
2. Building up Iraqi forces as quickly as possible (Iraqi-ization?) and
3. Bombing?

I'm like Atrios and Kos here: I didn't see the bombing part coming.

Sy Hersh is conveying the worries of Air Force experts that the targetting for U.S. bombs will be left to Iraqis--who will either be incompetent, and cause needless damage and resentment, or will target according to their own agendas, perhaps deliberately widening a civil war.

Could it be that we will yet see massive bombing of civilian populations in Iraq? It did, after all, work in Germany and Japan. But then, the main goal in those cases was to end or fatally weaken loyalties to totalitarian regimes that had become extremely powerful. "We" had to demonstrate our own enormous power, and our willingness to use it; the power of God, the arbitrariness of the Devil. See Yglesias here, linked here. See also here.

With Bush in office for three more years, is that the future for at least some Iraqi cities?

UPDATE Dec. 17: To my amazement, Jim Pinkerton has proposed the slaughter (by Iraqis) of most if not all Sunnis in Iraq in order to bring peace. Liberation, Jim? I used to think of him as so level-headed....