Escalation is underway:

ome 25 U.S. troops in Iraq were killed in a single day this weekend, making it the third bloodiest since the war began....

Twelve of the 25 were killed in the crash of a Blackhawk helicopter northeast of Baghdad. Some were killed in Anbar province by Sunni insurgents. Five were killed in Karbala, in Shiite territory... In the current phase of operations, as more troops move into Baghdad, the increase in troop strength is less significant than the increase in the tempo of operations. As the U.S. military becomes more aggressive, it will incur more casualties.

I picked up this because of an AP piece in the local paper that I read while getting lunch. It quoted a couple anonymous Iraqi officials on how good American intel was, “The Americans don’t act on rumors but on accurate intelligence..." Yeah, right, buddy.

Anyway, those troops killed in Karbala were trying to have a meeting to make security plans. The meeting was blown up. Not a good sign.

The rest of the Stratfor analysis is semi-bunk. They posit a few hypotheticals, and opine that Sadr may be playing into Bush's hands, as the Decider is ostensibly trying to restart "the political process" by threatening militia organizations with a crackdown.

First of all, I find it hard to believe that this is Bush's actual goal. I think his goal is to run out the clock on his term in office without having to face the consequences of his actions. This escalation is best understood less as a "surge" and more as a "punt."

Second of all, while Sadr is a big player in the demolition derby that is Iraqi militia ownership, everything I've seen strongly suggests that the authority structure there is very decentralized. Many of the actual fighting cadres who go under the banner of the Madhi army have often done the opposite of what Sadr says. In addition, that loose network of forces accounts for at best 30% of the combatants in this multi-polar civil war. Sadr simply isn't important enough to pull it together. At this point, no one is.

Finally, building on that point, the "political process" in Iraq is poisoned by the fact that the official government is the creation of an occupying power (e.g. us) which is universally unwanted. Prime Minister Malaki has very little legitimacy, and his government can's keep the electricity on. Not only is there no one person (or group) to bring thing together, there's also no place or process to bring it together around.

As long as we're holding down the Green Zone against insurgents and Baghdad doesn't have reliable street-lights, the whole pretense of a political process is pretty much masturbatory, as is the occupation in general. We're prolonging if not exacerbating the situation. It's going to be bloody awful any way we play it, but we can't pull out (oh no!) because that would be... well... like admitting we were wrong to go there in the first place.

So the tragedy marches on, an almost mythical take of hubris.

UPDATE: And this: