The Redhunter

* The internally organized insurgency (al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency) is decline. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is hurt and perhaps dying; the Sunnis are looking to throw in the towel.

* Criminal gangs and ethnic militias are the rising threat. But Casey does not appear all that worried. "And if you look at where the sectarian violence is occurring, it's occurring within about a 30-mile -- 90 percent of it is occurring in about a 30- mile radius around Baghdad"

* Something happened "since the December elections and in the aftermath of the Samarra bombing" that made the security situation "more complex". And that something appears to be the increasing role of Iran using the Lebanese Hezbollah and Qods to direct and support "a wide variety of groups across southern Iraq".
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If I were to guess, and I emphasize guess, it means that the US is now in the process of shifting its strategic focus from al-Qaeda and Sunni threats to Iran.

I now look back at last month's "Now Entering Phase IV of the War in Iraq", and I think I got some of it right, and some of it wrong. I was right when I said that the Sunni/al-Qaeda insurgency was finished, or at least on it's last legs. I got it partially right when I said that our next move would be against the militias. And I entirely missed the new focus on Iran.

Maybe I should have paid more attention to this comment by Secretary Rumsfeld at a March 7, 2006 briefing at the Pentagon

I will say this about Iran. They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq. And we know it, and it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment.

Q Why is that?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I've said all I have to say.

Interesting.

Turning to the always valuable StrategyPage, we see this from Patterns in Iraq, posted on June 22.

The bloodshed in Iraq is getting worse, and involving U.S. troops less and less. In the last year, over 10,000 Iraqi civilians died from terrorist and internecine violence. That's about twice as many deaths as the year before. ...

The government is trying to rein in the death squads formed within the police (for the most part) and army (much more rare). But this is hard. The government has not been able to shut down the Sunni Arab terrorists and criminal gangs either.
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The government is willing to go after al Qaeda leaders (most of whom are Iraqis these days, at least in Iraq), but the Sunni Arab terror groups are basically tribal issues. If you want to shut these guys down, you have to cut a deal with the tribal overlords. That's taking time, and in the meantime the killing gets worse. The Sunni Arabs try to return the favor when their own are murdered. But that's becoming harder to do as the Kurds and Shia Arabs get better at doing what was, for so long, a Sunni Arab monopoly.

And from Memories are Long, Factions are Many and Tempers are Short, posted the next day

Iraq isn't slipping into Civil War, it's never emerged from the civil disorder that arose when Saddam's police state was taken apart three years ago. Five decades of Sunni Arab dictatorship, and three decades of Saddam's increasingly murderous police state, had changed Iraqi society. The change was similar to what was discovered when the communist governments of Eastern Europe were overthrown in 1989-91. People were glad to be free, but still cursed with many bad habits acquired during decades of despotic rule. One of the worst habits was an unfamiliarity with how law and order works, and why it's so important. ...

So what is the Iraqi government to do with this mess? Actually, the situation is typical of the region, where memories are long, factions are many and tempers are short. You make deals with as many factions as you can, and kill or imprison those who refuse to negotiate.
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There are already some 250,000 Iraqi security personnel armed and at work. Another 60,000 or so will be in action by the end of the year.

Normally I find the best information available from pure Internet sources, but occasionally something from the msm strikes my interest. This article from the Washington Post is a case in point. Titled "Analysis: Iraq Insurgency Fights On", Steven Hurst of the Associated Press writes that

Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at Rand Corp., said the good news side of the balance sheet, when seen as a whole, is a "significant step forward, at least in the immediate sense."

"But the facts on the ground have not really changed one iota. It was just one brick in the wall. It (the al-Zarqawi killing) was decisive, but the rest of the machine (al-Qaida in Iraq) remains intact," he said in telephone interview.

In recent months, the Bush administration increasingly has acknowledged that it will be years before Iraq is a truly stable and democratic nation. But that goal, at present, appears to be receding even as progress is made against the Sunni-dominated insurgency that has killed hundreds of U.S. soldiers and thousands of Iraqis.

Criminal gangs and sectarian militias are rapidly filling a security vacuum created by the lack of a trustworthy police force. The Interior Ministry, a Shiite-run agency that controls police forces, is rife with militiamen bent on revenge killings, shakedowns and kidnapping for ransom.

"Sectarian and ethnic violence has come to rival the insurgency in terms of casualties and the threat it poses to political, social and economic progress in Iraq," security analyst Anthony H. Cordesman writes in an advance copy of a book he is writing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The article goes on to paint a pretty bleak picture. Predictable, I suppose, but somewhat out of sync with my other sources. Who is right? I think that the Post article is overly pessimistic, but one can accuse StrategyPage of being overoptimistic. The Post article is a bit simplistic, but Hurst does raise some very good points. I suppose it is trite to say that "only time will tell", but