If America's military role is now reduced to partnering with the best-armed insurgents, it is doing nothing to make Iraq more governable by its future elected leaders.
The majority of those killed, about 5,000, were insurgents, it says.
But now, after more than three weeks of fighting between American marines and insurgents, it is known as the Falluja Martyrs Cemetery.
Just last month, the Taliban set off a series of bombs in the heart of Kabul; the insurgents, it appears, no longer need to winter in Pakistan.
Even as the mainstream demonises the insurgents, it also panders to them by adopting pale versions of their policies against immigration, global finance and the EU.
Just as a porous, rugged border has allowed the infiltration of insurgents, it has also provided pathways for the spread of polio.
They said that in a city of several million people and in a country rife with insurgents it was hard to stop every attack.
We have given them all the information they need including the level of sophistication of the insurgents; it's up to them to act".
Since, in that crash, there were no Russian victims, the Kremlin could fully focus on exonerating the insurgents it supported and on discrediting Western sources — and the deepening confrontation with the West facilitated this task.
Looking at some of these charts with their crisscrossed lines connecting politicians, drug traffickers and insurgents — it's easy to conclude that this country is ruled neither by the government, nor NATO, nor the Taliban, but by the MAN.
