As reported by media critic Norman Solomon and also here earlier this month, the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq announced recently by Secretary Rumsfeld doesn't mean that the war there is ending or even being wound down.
As in Vietnam 35 years ago, as the troops come out, the bombers will go in.
The Washington Post yesterday became the first major media organ to confirm the war's new direction, and provided numbers.
The Post's Bradley Graham reported that "US airstrikes in Iraq have surged this fall, jumping to nearly five times the average monthly rate earlier in the year, according to US military figures.
"Until the end of August, US warplanes were conducting about 25 strikes a month. The number rose to 62 in September, then to 122 in October and 120 in November."
Read the whole thing here.
The Bush administration's strategy is obvious enough: they're hoping that Americans will forget about the war if they're not confronted with daily U.S. casualty statistics. They're assuming that while news of Americans killed in action upsets us, the death toll among Iraqis either won't be widely reported or, if it is, won't bother us.
After all, who cares about a few dead Arabs.
The problem is, re-tooling the war as an air campaign is dangerous in ways the ground campaign was not. These new dangers were examined in detail by the December 5 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh that originally reported this story, "Up in the Air"
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