Kaboom! How to enrage Iraq's Sunnis.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, May 18, 2005, at 2:04 PM PT

The most dismaying thing I've read in a while is a Page One story in the May 17 Philadelphia Inquirer, by staff reporters Hannah Allam and Mohammed al Dulaimy, headlined, "Iraqis Lament a Call for Help." If you want to know why we're not winning in Iraq, and why we're not likely to win anytime soon (if ever), there is no more brutally illustrative tale.

The story concerns Operation Matador, last week's clash between U.S. forces and foreign jihadists in the desert villages of western Iraq. Officials have portrayed the operation as a grand success. Allam and Dulaimy depict it as a grave disaster.