Return to Karmah

Last year, in my post The Surge is Working!, I said to check on a general's prediction that Karmah would be cleared by the end of July. Maybe it was. But three weeks ago three marines and 17 Iraqis were killed by a suicide bomber.

On July 2, Iraqi army forces found a cache of weapons in Karmah. Some might take this as positive news. Others who are more skeptical might take it as Iraqi army members sympathetic with the resistence giving up some relatively low value weapons to deflect suspicion that was on them after the bombing.

From Robert Reid's AP story:

Two policemen said the bomber was able to penetrate security because he was a wearing camouflage uniform of the Iraqi police commandos. Both policemen spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Meanwhile, Marines moving headquarters out of Fallujah.

The military thinks they can prevent reporting of the truth. Here is Zoriah's blog post that got him unembedded.