Caught in the triangle...

From the start, this blog talked about our troops being in the center of a civil war- between the Kurds, Sunnis and Shia. Looking at the situation now, that may have been too simple. There is no center.

In all, at least 57 people died and 17 were injured in the violence that day, Sept. 18.
They were all killed in the same country, but not in the same war. The fighting in Iraq is not a single conflict, but an overlapping set of conflicts, fought on multiple battlegrounds, with different combatants. Increasingly, American troops are caught between the competing forces.
In western Iraq's deserts, Sunni Arab insurgent groups, some homegrown and others dominated by foreign fighters, attack Iraqi government forces and the U.S. troops who back them up. In Baghdad and surrounding provinces, Sunni and Shiite fighters attack each other and their rivals' civilians in a burgeoning civil war that U.S. troops have tried to quell.
In southern Iraq, the Shiites dominate. But they are divided, with rival militias fighting over oil and commerce. And in the north of the country, Arabs and Kurds battle for control.
Often during the last three years, the U.S. military has shifted troops to try to tamp down one of these conflicts, only to see another escalate. Now, many American officials worry that with the proliferation of armed actors in Iraq's multiple conflicts, the original U.S. counterinsurgency mission has become something else — an operation aimed at quelling civil war, which is a much more ambiguous and politically fraught objective.
American troops find themselves in the crossfire, caught among foreign militants, Sunni Muslim nationalist rebels, Shiite Muslim militiamen and other armed groups — all fighting each other.

Our troops were sent to a war based on lies. They now find themselves with targets on their backs - everyone wants to target them. There is no end in sight. There is no immediate solution.

When you are down on your own 20 and it's fourth down with 15 to go what do you do? Punt of course.

It's time we punt our asses out of Iraq!