It seemed like something different was going on recently and I worried that we were running across attack groups getting set to try and pull a last-ditch Tet-style offensive to reverse our winning streak in Iraq.
Strategypage writes that yes, the insurgents are trying a Tet strategy:
Al Qaeda is desperately trying to produce an "Iraqi Tet" -- a Middle Eastern repetition of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong 1968 offensive in South Vietnam.
On April 2 and again on April 4, the terror gang led by Al Qaeda's Iraq commander, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, launched "military-style attacks" on the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Baghdad. In the April 4 assault, U.S. forces took 44 casualties (most of them minor wounds). The terrorist gang, however, took 50 casualties, out of a force estimated at 60 gunmen.
On April 11, the gang attacked a Marine compound at Husaybah near the Syrian border. As I write, terrorist casualties are unconfirmed, but the assault flopped.
Strategypage says they can't pull it off. And the fact that it is al Qaeda and not the Baathists encourages me to go along with this assessment. The Baathists would have the numbers to hit all around the Sunni Triangle. The Islamists don't have the numbers. They can hope to pick off an outpost, but this isn't a Tet threat, it seems. Zarqawi doesn't have a deep enough bench.
And like I said before, with the press almost uniformly pessimistic over the war the last two years, an Iraq Tet wouldn't have anywhere near the same impact as it did in 1968. We "lost Cronkite" on the Iraq War a long time ago.
What is puzzling is that last year Zarqawi predicted that he'd have no luck once the Iraqis elected their own government and that he'd have to move to greener pastures to fight America. Yet he tries desperate attacks against US troops inside Iraq. Why? Does he have no place to go? Are potential hosts too afraid of us to grant asylum?
Will Zarqawi actually die in Iraq?
