Meanwhile, back in Iraq

Fox News points to a continuing and intensifying pattern of attacks on the Coalition's Iraqi forces, especially security troops. This is not surprising given the election is looming. The "insurgents" cannot allow the election to go forward because a free election ends any possible assertion that they have some legitimacy.

Update:Blackfive offers up this link to The Green Side and this letter home:

Elections are less than a month away.  The combination of the smashing defeat the enemy suffered in Fallujah along with the prospect of looming free elections has made them desperate.  They regularly threaten the people by telling them that any one who goes to vote will be killed by the muj.  They claim to be watching the polling places and continue to state that they will wage suicide attacks on the crowds that assemble there.

You have probably seen from the news that the ongoing murder and intimidation campaign on the Iraqi security forces has continued as well.  We recently received a report that an Iraqi soldier in our area was drug from his home and beheaded.  The muj barged into his house as he and his family were eating dinner and simply drug him out to his front yard and beheaded him while his wife and children were held inside only feet away.  This sounds shocking but it is the world in which the Iraqi people live here and one that would only get worse if they did not have the coalition to help keep the muj at bay.  Plainly stated it is pure savagery.

The insurgency is a collection of different elements that have gotten together out of a marriage of convenience and who are galvanized by a common enemy - us.  The greatest irony is that the two most prominent players in the insurgency are former regime members from the Ba'ath party and the international Islamic extremists.  These two elements are deeply in bed together but they do what they can to keep their alliance secret.  The old regime henchmen hide out here in Iraq or just across the border and pump money and direction into the insurgency so that they can some day resume power.  The Islamic extremist take the training and money offered by Sadaam's cronies and do the bidding of these criminals so that they can create a sectarian state not unlike the one the Taliban created in Afghanistan.  How in the world can you call yourself a holy warrior and be in league with some of the greatest criminals this region has known?

You can't - if you are honest.