] Sixteen months after the war's supposed end, Iraq's
] insurgency is spreading. Each successful demand by
] kidnappers has spawned more hostage-takings%u2014to make
] Philippine troops go home, to stop Turkish truckers from
] hauling supplies into Iraq, to extort fat ransom payments
] from Kuwaitis. The few relief groups that remain in Iraq
] are talking seriously about leaving. U.S. forces have
] effectively ceded entire cities to the insurgents, and
] much of the country elsewhere is a battleground. Last
] week the total number of U.S. war dead in Iraq passed the
] 1,000 mark, reaching 1,007 by the end of Saturday.

[ And also :

"Another ominous sign is the growing number of towns that U.S. troops simply avoid. A senior Defense official objects to calling them "no-go areas." "We could go into them any time we wanted," he argues. The preferred term is "insurgent enclaves." They're spreading. Counterinsurgency experts call it the "inkblot strategy": take control of several towns or villages and expand outward until the areas merge. The first city lost to the insurgents was Fallujah, in April. Now the list includes the Sunni Triangle cities of Ar Ramadi, Baqubah and Samarra, where power shifted back and forth between the insurgents and American-backed leaders last week. "There is no security force there [in Fallujah], no local government," says a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad. "We would get attacked constantly. Forget about it." "

Awesome. -k]