[Airbornelawyer]

All of the factors identified above, as well as a few others not mentioned, played a role, but at least with regard to the so-called "Sunni Triangle", no factor really played a central role.

Besides factors already mentioned - the Kurdish mini-uprising in Syria that has Ba'athists there worried, the confluence of religious and secular Iraqi holidays, the ramp-up of pressure on al-Sadr, the lesson the terrorists took from 3-11, the jockeying for position in the lead-up to June 30, US electoral politics (or at least how it is being covered in the Arab media - there are also a couple of factors not mentioned.

One of the big ones, especially in the Shi'ite south, is the troop rotation. In one sense, the terrorists missed an opportunity: 3-11 exposed weaknesses in the coalition. Had such an attack come earlier, it might have affected many coalition members. As it is, most of these countries, including Spain, had already started or completed troop rotations before 3-11. This ranged from minor partners like El Salvador and Latvia to bigger players like Poland, Ukraine and the Netherlands (which has actually undergone its third rotation). Some of these countries might have rethought their contributions had a 3-11-like attack already occurred, and rotated their first contingents back home without allowing for a follow-on. As it is, almost all reconfirmed their commitment to keep the forces they had just deployed.

But on the other side of the equation is this: throughout most of Iraq are troops only recently arrived in country, so they are being tested. All but the Ukrainians have responded aggressively. Unfortunately the Ukrainians have one of the largest contingents -a separate brigade with three mechanized infantry battalions - so while their pulling out of al-Kut proper and returning to their bases outside the city might have been tactically sound, it was a propaganda victory for al-Sadr's supporters. Luckily, US, Ukrainian and Iraqi forces quickly retook the city, mitigating the damage.

In Fallujah, also, a troop rotation had just begun, with the Marines moving in, so a test of our resolve was on the horizon.

But back to my "no factor" premise. At least as regards Fallujah, the attack on the Blackwater contractors was nothing new. Terrorists and insurgents in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" have been attacking and killing US forces, Iraqi police, civilians and foreign aid workers on a low level pretty much incessantly for the past year. These four more were really only different in the sense that the savage brutality of the terrorists and the local mobs was televised worldwide. It was our response that escalated it into a major campaign.

In a sense, the "why now?" question should be asked of President Bush and GEN Abizaid - i.e., why now, instead of weeks ago when terrorists, many apparently operating out of Fallujah safe havens, killed hundreds of Shi'ite pilgrims in coordinated strikes, or months ago, when that Iraqi judge issued the sealed warrant for al-Sadr's arrest, or any number of incidents? I don't mean to sound like I am armchair generalling. The fact is, the coalition has been actively conducting operations throughout the past year - operations which had been quite successful in reducing the threat to American forces (but leading the terrorists to shift their focus to softer targets like Iraqi police and civilians and foreign workers). But there has been a sense that we have been trying to keep a lid on things, playing whack-a-mole with the terrorists, and just hoping we could get through to the transition, and get more Iraqi forces on the streets to reduce the burden on the coalition and give the occupation more of an Iraqi face. A number of our coalition partners have gone out of their way to portray their missions as almost entirely humanitarian, and de-emphasize the combat aspect, which may have led them to not deal as aggressively with some armed factions like al-Sadr's militias. The coalition, especially the Americans in Baghdad, treated this as a problem to be dealt with later, after the other problems had been addressed. "Later", unfortunately, arrived at the same time as those other problems showed they still needed addressing.

At the end of the day, this was a fight we needed to fight, and we are fighting and winning, as near as I can tell. The media and the Democratic Party solons are doing their best to turn this into another Tet, in both senses (i.e., a flawed Vietnam analogy because that is all they can come up with, and yet another attempt, like Tet '68, to turn a potential victory into a defeat). I guess, what it comes down to is this: the reason it is happening now is that we are making it happen now. We are seizing the initiative. I hate to sound too cheerleaderish, but we are KATN, not the terrorists. The only ones who can defeat us here are ourselves.