April 18th, 2004, 11:30 pm

With a finger caught in a bloody dam

Truthout’s William Rivers Pitt’s eloquent Should we stay or should we go now explanation of the situation in Iraq.

Even more frightening than a rational explanation of the various fighting factions in Iraq is this careless dismissal of it, as quoted by the New York Times:

On Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for the American command, who had previously emphasized the growing role of Islamic terrorists in the conflict, said at a news conference that the military no longer considered the distinction between Saddam loyalists and militant Islamists to be so significant from the viewpoint of military operations.      ”I’m not sure trying to over-classify these different groups is helpful,” he said. “It might help somehow in the intelligence community, in terms of trying to find out where they come from and trying to find some trails onto them. But on the operations side we just call them targets.”