Belgravia Dispatch marks the one year anniversary of Dick Cheney’s “[the insurgency] is in the last throes” statement with a rundown of casualties over time along with a rundown of the types of things that are happening.

He also has a very good rundown of the state of the war in Iraq. He discusses the perils of both troop withdrawal as well as the perils of having more troops in theater. He remains, of course, a proponent of increasing troop levels in strategic ways. My overall impression from the article could be summed up as “damned if you do and damned if you don’t.” The complexity of the interrelationships between the various groups committing violence in Iraq is daunting for an non-specialist like me. Greg Djerejian, who authors and owns Belgravia Dispatch, on the other hand, was a term CFR member and actually has some foreign service experience. Go read both posts.